


Come All You Wasted, Wretched, and Scorned

by engeeo



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Custom Male Ryder, Identity Issues, Kissing, M/M, Politics, Pre-Relationship, Roekaar, are given more nuance than the base game which isn't saying much, good old-fashioned projection, high noon, kadara quests strung together in a barely cohesive arc to explore relevant factions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engeeo/pseuds/engeeo
Summary: A galaxy away, Reyes wants to be someone. Ryder is still trying to be someone he's not.
Relationships: Male Ryder | Scott/Reyes Vidal
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

_ Human Pathfinder arrived today from the Nexus. Tried to remotely hack their ship logs, but they’ve got some serious security. Bounced right off the ship’s VI and got back a single file in binary. Translated: “A turian walks into a bar and orders Asari honey mead. ‘You can’t drink that,’ the bartender tells him. ‘That's a levo-based drink.’ ‘It’s okay,’ the turian says. ‘I’m ambidextrose!’” _

***

“Andromeda is our second chance,” Ryder recited under his breath. “A new kind of civilization.”

The words were familiar, and familiarity went a long way in their new home. But no matter how many times he repeated them, they were strange and ill-fitting in his mouth. They were his father’s words, after all. His thoughts, too. He’d believed that, unhindered by tradition, fear, or expectation, the Initiative was their chance to finally leave behind the trappings of the old world, once and for all. Humanity could finally grow. Bigger, brighter,  _ better _ .

But as Ryder looked around Kadara Point, he saw little evidence of his father’s prophesied  _ Ubermensch _ . Kadara was nothing like the Citadel or Thessia back home, sure, but it was remarkably similar to any of the hundreds of backwater, crime-ridden port cities of the Milky Way. Vendors scowled at anyone who dared approach their stall, private security guards made a show of polishing their big, bad, modified guns, and the rotten-egg smell of sulfur clung to the ever-present layer of haze. On the outskirts of the market, he saw a cluster of uniformed Outcast guards, kicking a prostrate human as he valiantly tried to curl into a ball.

“Sloane sends her regards,” one of the guards said. He was krogan, flanked on either side by his human and turian companions. Ryder was sure his father would be pleased to see interspecies cooperation thriving in Andromeda.

“Please,” the man begged. “Tell Sloane I’ll have her money in a week! I have a family--” His words were cut off by an armored kick to the ribs.

Ryder flinched in sympathy. The uniformed krogan appeared to be the leader, each of his fellow guards making sure they never stomped faster or harder than he did. No one stopped to watch. The crowd parted around them like they were pyjak shit they’d rather not get on their boot. People tapped away at their omni-tools, swirled their drinks, and continued towards their destination.

New galaxy, same people.

“Hey!” the krogan snapped. “What’re you looking at?”

Ryder made a show of looking side to side.  _ Who, me? _ he tried to communicate.

_ The locals have noticed your presence _ , SAM supplied helpfully.  _ I would advise trying to blend in with the crowd; otherwise, you may have to prepare for confrontation. _

Ryder didn’t have time to contemplate the uncountable amount of money and manpower that had gone into developing the most powerful AI in two galaxies, only for it to suggest what his sympathetic nervous system had been doing since humans had first grown legs to walk on land. He cast his gaze around the crowd, trying to mimic their disinterest. He crossed his arms and stared at the omni-tool on his wrist. Now, to slowly back away...

“Hey!” the krogan said, pushing aside his comrades to get a better look at him. “You’re Nexus, aren’t you? Could smell the red tape and false promises from miles away,” he sneered. “Your kind’s not wanted here.”

What the krogan was smelling was probably  _ soap _ , Ryder thought but didn’t vocalize. The krogan had endured centuries of manipulation and genocide, only to be used again in a new galaxy, promised and denied justice by the Nexus. The past was supposed to be left behind where it happened, and yet, here they were. As though reading his mind, the krogan guard snorted and adjusted the grip on his weapon. 

Of the many messes dumped on him by the people who’d started it, Ryder was especially grateful he wasn’t the one responsible for repairing krogan-Nexus relations.

“I’m just here to talk,” he said diplomatically. With the exception of Sloane’s security, there were no guns allowed in the cease-fire zone. His biotic implant buzzed at the nape of his neck. Dark energy always made his hands shake, giving him shit aim.

“You got something to say? Say it here,” the krogan spat. “What do our Nexus overlords have to say to us?”

_ I would recommend choosing your next words carefully, Pathfinder. This krogan’s body language suggests that he will look for any excuse to fight you _ .

“I’m not here on behalf of the Nexus.” Only half a lie. “We have a common enemy in the kett. If I can complete my business here, we’ll have a much better chance against--”

“Pah!” the krogan roared with laughter. “You think Kadara needs help with kett?” He jerked his chin towards the decomposing heads welcoming visitors to the port. Ryder looked just in time to watch a glob of coagulated brain matter splat against the base of a spike. “Sloane Kelly and the Outcasts drove them all out when they arrived. Sloane keeps us safe. More than the Nexus can say for its own.”

The krogan took a step closer, his cronies falling in line behind him. Ryder could see the individual scales on his face now, the jagged scars and cracked spikes on his spruce green head plate. He was outnumbered, unarmed, and outside any zone that recognized his authority. They wouldn’t kill him,  _ probably _ , but he could easily see himself being thrown ass over tea kettle out the docks, the door slamming shut while they collected the week’s worth of parking fees they’d already paid. And he’d lose the only lead he and the Resistance had.

Perhaps, Ryder thought desperately, he could appeal to the krogan’s sense of strength. Yes, individual contests of strength between humans and krogans had always gone well, with both parties’ organs correctly arranged and inside their bodies at the end of them. But before Ryder could try and raise a mass effect field around himself and his innards, a voice cut through the crowd:

“Ryder!”

Jogging up to the confrontation was a well-groomed human man, each dark hair slicked back and impeccably placed. His face was handsome, in an unaffected, old-Earth kind of way, before gene therapy made everyone’s faces perfectly symmetrical. He outstretched both hands in a placating manner, effortlessly achieving the casual  _ Is there a problem here? _ look Ryder had tried, and failed, to emulate.

“You know this Nexus runt, Vidal?” the krogan asked, hesitating.

“I’ve been expecting him,” the man, Vidal, said. “Are you being rude to my guests, Urex?” He looked around at Urex’s crew, raising an eyebrow in admonishment.

“No,” the krogan said. According to Drack, krogan had neither the physical nor emotional capacity to blush. But Urex looked close. “Just making sure he’s not a danger to the Port. Like we do with everyone.” He huffed and hoisted his shotgun on his shoulder.

Vidal smoothly inserted himself between the two parties, placing a friendly hand on Urex’s free shoulder. His gloved hand barely curved around the krogan’s enormous armor.

“Good, good. I had news for you, too--I just had a shipment dropped off at New Tuchanka. Your brother and his family appreciated the delivery. They wanted you to know they’re doing good.”

“‘Good,’ on that crusty varren’s asshole of a planet?” Urex spit in disdain and shook his head. “Those hard-headed motherfuckers. Should’ve come here where we’re safe from the kett, and the sun.” But after a moment, he bared his teeth in something resembling a smile and clapped a taloned hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Vidal. I knew I could rely on you.”

Ryder’s hands shook one last time as the tension slipped from his body. His implant had stopped buzzing, thankfully, and his head cleared enough to register what was happening. 

Hands on shoulders, good, yes. He’d rarely seen this on the Citadel, where people were more wary of potential diplomatic or biological conflict. He mentally tucked this gesture away in his social repertoire.

“Let’s move out, gang,” Urex said to his squad.

“But, boss--”

“I said, move out!” The krogan shouldered his way past his men, an easy enough feat given his girth. The patrol looked at each other, some glancing at Vidal and nodding, others frowning, before disappearing into the open marketplace.

Vidal watched them go, then turned to face Ryder. Under the full weight of his gaze for the first time, Ryder suddenly felt vulnerable in spite of his full-body armor. He rubbed at a bit of dirt on his holster, but it was a pointless endeavor. His entire ensemble was well-scuffed and dinged.

“Drinks?” Vidal offered. He motioned towards a door tucked into the corner of the market. In sputtering neon lights, nearly invisible from the main plaza, a sign flashed in pink script: KR AS S. “You look like you’re waiting for someone.”

***

Vidal walked into KR AS S-- _ This is likely the bar, Kralla’s Song, where Evfra’s contact is waiting _ , SAM chirped, even though they both knew Ryder was being facetious--like he owned the place. That is, he carried himself like every other self-important exile on this port, while Ryder stood out like a sore thumb as he vacillated between Alliance lockstep and slouching. Like his body would try to walk one way, grow dissatisfied with it, and race to the correct itself with the other extreme. Rinse and repeat.

Ryder sipped at his drink politely. Alcohol normally tasted like shit, and the disinfectant at Kralla’s was no exception. But his host was generous enough to offer him a drink, so Ryder smiled and pretended to tip back the clear liquid.

When Vidal had taken the drinks from the surly asari bartender, flashing her a wink and getting a scowl in return, he had introduced himself as Shena, the contact for the angaran Resistance. But he hated code names. So Reyes Vidal it was.

Ryder shook his hand, said the appropriate words when meeting someone new, and clinked tin cups with the man.

“So, you’re the angaran contact?”

“The Resistance pays me to supply information--among other things.”

“You’re the angaran contact, because you’re angaran-paid?” Ryder asked.

“My services are for-hire,” he answered easily. “Would it surprise you if I was not interested in being killed by the kett?”

Ryder shook his head. “That’s more sense than I’ve heard from most people.”

Vidal chuckled softly. He was one of those people who, when they laughed at something you said, could make you feel like it was your life’s mission to make them smile again. Those people were dangerous, Ryder knew. Particularly when they were selling something.

Fortunately, Vidal offered his information freely:

“Your man--Vehn Terev--was arrested by Sloane Kelly, leader of the Outcasts. Word spread about what he did to Moshae Sjefa.”

“I can’t imagine the angara are happy.”

“No, they’re not. They’re calling for his execution, and Sloane… well, she’s a woman of the people.”

“I can tell,” Ryder said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Vidal smiled. “Don’t mind her thugs. They’re just a casualty of business here on Kadara, or anywhere else.” He led Ryder to the windows that wrapped the circumference of the bar. Built into the side of the mountaintop, the bar allowed patrons to admire the scenery below: dilapidated slums made from salvage, and a sparse, toxic scrubland dotted with poisonous sulfur springs. “Now, for Terev… the Resistance wants him alive, ideally. Things rarely go ‘ideally’ down here, so I’ll leave the specifics to you. But you’re not just here for the traitor, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

Ryder looked down at his untouched glass, then back at Vidal’s face. Between the eyes, just under the left, just under the right. A little, tight circle of emulated eye contact.

“You’ve been busy setting up outposts on the other habitable planets, yes? I’m sure the Nexus would love to get its hand on a major trading post in Govorkam.”

Ryder cut him off. “Just Terev for now. If I can get Sloane to let me talk to him, that’s enough.”

“Of course,” Vidal said. And he winked, patting him on the shoulder before backing away from the window. “Good luck, Ryder.” 

Ryder watched him leave. He was still holding his drink, which was starting to get warm in its metal cylinder. Did he leave it on the counter? Bring it back to the bartender? He glanced over at the asari behind the counter, who quickly found eye contact with her prey. She beckoned him forward. Thank god, she’d be taking this off his hands--

“Hey. Drinks aren’t free.”

***

Ryder recognized one of the armed krogan on either side of him. He was the aggressor at the docks. Urex had laughed when he’d spotted him approaching Sloane’s compound, punching him lightly (for a krogan, which is to say it hit like anyone else’s regular, full-strength punch) in the back. It wasn’t entirely friendly, but it wasn’t entirely hostile, either. Ryder would take what he could get.

The doors to Sloane’s throne room hissed open. One of the krogan behind him prodded him forward with the barrel of his shotgun. The throne room was aptly named--Sloane was perched on a heavy chrome seat at the very end of the room, looking simultaneously haughty and bored. An appropriate simulacrum of aristocracy. She was silhouetted by the glare of a wide, slatted window behind her, which framed an impressive view of Kadara’s sulfurous vista. The smell of rotten eggs, otherwise omnipresent in every other part of the port, was miraculously circulated out of the atmosphere indoors.

Sloane raised a hand:  _ wait _ .

Her guards waited.

This really was her castle, Ryder realized. There was no way into the throne room without breaking past multiple layers of reinforced walls, mag-locked doors, and well-armed security. There were guards everywhere. A turian soldier hovered protectively by Sloane’s side, possibly a personal retainer. Not that she needed one. Despite her positioning by the window, her castle’s height and angle protected her from any potential snipers. Ryder imagined she could send the entire place into lockdown at will, sealing heavy doors and snapping shut the metal blinds behind her. 

_ It would be difficult to infiltrate her compound through force _ , SAM intoned in their private channel.  _ The walls are made of salvaged scrap from the Nexus--a lightweight, but highly durable alloy. The windows, too, are made of ballistic glass. This is both a palace and a bunker. _

Ryder imagined that the queen of Kadara Port didn’t get to go outside much. The strips of light coming through the slatted windows suddenly resembled prison bars.

“What do you want?” Sloane finally asked. She hardly looked up from flipping through a projected map of Kadara’s badlands before dismissing it with a wave of her hand. She looked him up and down for the first time, assessing and clearly finding him lacking. “What brings a Pathfinder to our humble port?”

He’d practiced his speech already: “Sloane Kelly. My name is Pathfinder Ryder--”

“I know who you are.” She lifted a boot to her seat, reclining in her throne. Under her facade of boredom was a dangerous glint in her eyes. Like so many others who’d served in the Alliance, military service had never really left her. Ryder could tell that her muscles were always coiled, ready to spring. She must have been able to see every inch of the room from her seat.

“Of course,” he said quickly. “I know you and the Nexus have bad blood. I wasn’t there for the uprising, but I can tell you that I don’t approve of how things went down. The Outcasts, the krogan--you were treated unfairly.”

“Save the ass-kissing for Tann, please.”

“I’m not here to force anyone to do anything,” and here he paused for emphasis, like he had practiced. “But did we travel 600 years just to be divided by factional in-fighting? Or did we come here to prove what humanity was capable of? The Initiative was supposed to be a chance to leave behind old grudges and ineffectual bureaucracy. That’s what the Initiative  _ can  _ be, if we work together.”

Sloane leaned forward in her chair, her face unreadable in the shadow of the sun’s glare. Ryder pushed on:

“Right now, there’s a bigger threat than either of us. Divided, the kett will have no trouble conquering us. And I know  _ I _ didn’t come out to Andromeda to have my ass kicked by some two-bit villains.” No, he came here because his dad told him to. “The Resistance wants Vehn Terev. He has information that can help us infiltrate a kett flagship.”

“Hm…” Sloane crossed her arms and seemed to contemplate this. “How about ‘no.’”

“Because you need the support of the local angara,” Ryder reasoned, floundering. He could still negotiate this. “And they want to see Terev dead. But if you supported the Resistance, you could win their favor.”

When he looked up, Sloane looked smug. Shit. “Do you know how many of the exiles from the Nexus actually participated in the uprising?”

Ryder shook his head. He assumed this was a rhetorical question. 

_ That is highly probable, Pathfinder _ .

“Not even half, and most of those numbers were krogan. Some people just got swept up in things. Other people were following their families. The vast majority? Cabin fever.” Sloane made a point to look into his eyes. “Do you know many people know  _ nothing  _ of the rebels who started the fighting or the backroom politics that led us here? They know Tann threatened to put them back in cryo, and Sloane Kelly led them to a planet where they get food and water. And that’s enough.

What I’m trying to say is this: most of the angara here don’t give a shit about politics on another planet. They love their Moshae, sure. Everyone loves the Queen. But really, that’s all they need to know. Some names that give them meaning when they look at stars, some names to curse when the kett kidnap their leader. Some names stamp out the kett in their port, and some names are slated for public execution.

People are simple, Pathfinder. They want to feel safe,” at this, she tapped the pistol that hung by her hip, “and they want to see the people who wronged them bleed. So, kindly, don’t tell me how to run my kingdom. And fuck off.”


	2. Chapter 2

_ Alec Ryder, former human Pathfinder (deceased). Ex-Alliance. Part of Grissom’s original Charon Relay task force. Served in First Contact War, later assigned to the Citadel. Dishonorably discharged from Alliance for illegal AI research. Research later picked up and sponsored by Andromeda Initiative. Developed SAM AI used by Pathfinders and Pathfinder teams. _

_ Attached: comprehensive list of awarded Alliance decorations, published papers, and media references _

_ James Ryder, current human Pathfinder. Ex-Alliance.  _

_ Attached: list of courses taken part-time at the Citadel’s public extranet college _

***

“You know,” Vidal’s voice crackled through the Nomad’s comms. “I did offer to help you break Vehn Terev out of his cell.”

Ryder gripped the steering wheel so hard he could feel blisters forming under his reinforced gloves. “Thanks, but I don’t--” he was interrupted by a particularly bad bump that lifted his ass from the leather of the driver's seat. “--need to,” he finished. “I’m negotiating with Sloane.”

From the shotgun seat, Drack spoke: “Might as well negotiate with a krogan in heat.” There was a touch of respect in his voice.

“Gross,” Harper said.

In the backseat next to her, Kosta smiled good-naturedly.

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” he probed.

“Ha! I’m too old for that shit now. Besides, even if I wasn’t, everything down there is prosthetic anyways--”

“Pathfinder,” Harper pleaded.

“Vidal, ETA on Kelly’s man?” They were approaching their destination quickly. If he squinted, Ryder could make out a cave entrance where the scrubland met the rusty, granite-colored rocks of Kadara’s cliff faces.

“Ten minutes, max. Kaetus grabbed a shuttle not long after you sent him the kett base coordinates.”

“Got it,” he said.

***

Kaetus was, best Ryder could tell, Sloane’s right-hand man. After Sloane politely told him to fuck off, the turian had stopped Ryder on the his way out of the throne room. Sloane didn’t trust the Nexus, he’d explained. But do her a favor as a show of good faith, and he’d make sure she heard about it. Personally.

That had gotten Ryder’s attention.

As Ryder stepped out into the crowded Kadara marketplace, his omni-tool blinked with a new message.

_ Have a good chat with Sloane? -RV _

Ryder grimaced.

_ I can’t get to Terev yet, but I have an in. Kaetus wants me to investigate kett attacks in the badlands _ .

There was a pause, and for a second, he wondered if he’d messaged the wrong person. This might have been a test from Kaetus. That would be bad.

_ Dangerous information _ , Vidal agreed.  _ Meet me in Tartarus for a chat, before you head out. _

Attached to the message were coordinates and a surprisingly sophisticated holo-map of the Kadara slums. He hoped “Tartarus” was a cheeky reference and not a literal descriptor.

It turned out to be another bar.

Ryder gave Vidal’s name at Tartarus’s entrance, and he was ushered into the two-story, cyan-and-magenta-lit club that resembled the Citadel dives his father had turned his head away from as a child. The floors were wet, and something clung to his boots every time he took a step. The substance was impossible to discern in the dim lighting.

_ Scanning the material may provide further insight _ , SAM suggested. Then he paused, contemplative.

_ You have already drawn conclusions about the makeup of the substance on the floor. Based on the unpleasant nature of these conclusions, you fear having them confirmed. _

Ryder winced. Another voice in his head reminded him that Ryders did not feel fear. They stepped into the unknown, boldly and willingly. 

_ I did not mean to upset you, Pathfinder _ , SAM said.

_ Yeah, it’s okay, SAM. Lay it on me.  _ Ryder discreetly faced an empty wall of the bar, its surface slick with condensation. He activated his scanner and pointed it towards his feet.

_ The liquid on the floor is only 10% urine, 5% other bodily fluids. At least 50% of it was once potable.  _ SAM paused.  _ That 50% does not include the bodily fluids. _

Ryder hardly had time to speculate on who taught the AI to deliver punchlines when a nearby door slid open.

“Ryder!” Vidal leaned against the beveled door frame. Did he redo his hair throughout the day, or did it naturally stay like that? Ryder self-consciously ran chunky, armored fingers through his own hair, succeeding only in making the situation worse. He tried to mimic Vidal’s easy stance. “Come in,” Vidal said, beckoning him into the room.

“Thanks.” Ryder watched the other man take a seat in the corner of the room. Vidal crossed one leg over the other and leaned into the booth like it was the most natural thing in the world. Ryder envied the ease with which he seemed to move through the galaxy. He realized, with a pang of jealousy, that Vidal seemed to  _ belong  _ wherever he went, while Ryder never did.

“Please, sit.” Vidal, to his credit, seemed more bemused than anything that Ryder hadn’t taken a step from the doorframe.

Ryder sat.

“Can I get you something to drink…?”

“Yes. I mean--” Ryder shook his head. “No, thank you. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be driving soon.”

“Of course,” Vidal nodded. “So, this deal you made with Sloane--I did not think she would be open to negotiation.”

“She’s not. But I talked to Kaetus, her second-in-command, and he said he’d put in a good word for me if I took care of his kett problem.”

“And you think Kaetus is good for his word?”

Ryder frowned. “I hope he is.”

“Ah, an optimist. We don’t have many of those around here.” Vidal smiled. Ryder didn’t sense anything mean-spirited behind the statement, but it was hard to tell with anyone who exchanged words for credits.

“No, I just… I’m just trying to do my job.” Ryder sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What went down between the Nexus and the exiles… that’s not what the Initiative is supposed to be about. I’m going to make that right.”

Vidal just shrugged noncommittally, still smiling pleasantly. He didn’t believe him.

“Kaetus sent me coordinates where Outcast shuttles were crashed, or shot, or robbed. Do you know anything about these?” Ryder tapped at his omni-tool, sending over a message.

“I hope these are encrypted--”

“Yes,” Ryder said, too quickly. “SAM handles security. There’s no way Sloane has the technology to crack these.”

Vidal bobbed his head in assent. Using his omni-tool, he projected a map of Kadara’s badlands with several glowing points, each accompanied by dates, shuttle origins, and model numbers. He immediately dismissed multiple with a wave of his hand. “That one’s a Collective job. That’s too old. Too far. That one was a cover-up for Amir’s drunk flying.”

Vidal finally tapped a pulsing dot in the southwest. “That’s the site you’re looking for.”

Ryder let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.” He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he’d seen just how far apart the navpoints were from each other.

“You know,” Vidal said. “You could always break Terev out of his cell. I have the codes to Sloane’s holding cells--cameras and all. She’d never know we were in and out.” Ryder saw him trying to gauge his response.

“She’d guess it was me, even without proof. And it doesn’t hurt to be owed a favor from the self-appointed ruler of Kadara Port,” he insisted.

“Well, you might want to collect quickly.” Another winning smile. “I hear these thrones are very volatile.”

***

With the sun low on the horizon, Kaetus arrived at their meeting point by shuttle. Vidal had been right--the shuttle that crashed had been attacked by kett, and following the tracks had led them to the kett base hidden in the Draullir mountains. Kaetus trekked up the incline towards the cave entrance, where Ryder waited with his party. Someone was following their turian contact.

“Sloane?”

“ _ Pathfinder _ ,” the woman said, her voice dripping with contempt.

“She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Kaetus offered by way of explanation. The turian followed several feet behind, either in deference or to keep an eye on Sloane’s back.

“I’m not about to let someone else fight my battles,” Sloane said. “Especially not some Initiative lap dog.”

Behind him, he felt more than saw Harper bristle. The air around her faintly shimmered with biotic energy. Kosta, too, furrowed his eyebrows. Ryder saw his face twist in an effort to keep his emotions calm. He always cared so much--he and Harper did, too, but for different reasons. Kosta truly cared about  _ people _ .

Drack spit on the ground, rustling his bones, but didn’t say anything.

“We’ve been listening since we got to the base,” Ryder said diplomatically. “We counted six or seven foot soldiers, maybe a couple snipers, and just as many Wraith. There’s a generator in the back, too, probably powering some shields.” He gestured from his squad to the base doors. “Drack takes point. Lieutenant Harper and Kosta will back him up.”

“And you?” Sloane asked, clearly dissatisfied with passively receiving orders.

“I’ll be going for their backline,” he said. He let a wave of biotic energy flicker up his body, communicating his plan. “I’ll need covering fire.” He nodded towards Kaetus and Sloane.

Sloane grunted but didn’t say anything.

“Ready?”

Kaetus nodded. As good as an answer he was going to get.

They pressed themselves against the cool walls of the cave system, a stark contrast to the warm brushland outside. Ryder felt sweat gathering in his gloves. Drack stretched, cracking something, or some _ things _ in his body before striding up to the door, the blade of his heavy Ruzad shotgun catching the last bits of sunlight.

“Go!”

***

No matter how many times he heard it, Drack’s blood rage-induced roar always triggered a deep, primal fear in Ryder. It rankled his gut, and for a moment, he was every enemy soldier in the Krogan Rebellions, hearing the last thing he’d ever hear.

Hot on Drack’s tail was Harper, who had sheathed herself in a biotic barrier and raced along the stone like a gymnast. Her rhythm was unfamiliar, nothing like his own biotics or even the cheap action movies he’d watched of Asari huntresses. In a single, deft movement, she sent a mass effect field across the battlefield, clearing a path through a line of armed kett. Several crates and steel barriers shattered along the way. Blasts of gunfire signaled Kosta’s presence by the door, picking off distracted enemies exposed in the center of the cavern.

Ryder peeked from the opposite side of the sliding doors. A bullet whizzed by his ear. He heard Drack laugh, then an impact; something invisible flew past him and smashed into the cave wall, sending bits of rock and rubble clattering to the ground. He saw now that it was a Wraith; the impact had forced it out of its cloak and into unconsciousness.

In the chaos, he barely noticed Sloane and Kaetus taking up their positions. They crouched by barricades that had been spared by Harper’s earlier wave of force, easily falling into a comfortable rhythm. Sloane pointed her rifle, and Kaetus’ bullets flew from his gun’s muzzle like a hunting dog let off its leash. Ryder saw several staggered kett Chosen crumple under the assault.

“Get moving, Pathfinder!” Sloane shouted. In the back of the cavern, a raised platform, teetering on thin, cylindrical beams, maybe 15 feet high. Ryder saw the red dot of a sniper’s scope.

Ryder readjusted the grip on his gun. No time to think. With a barrier in place and a running start, he felt the gravity around him adjust, the dark energy coalesce around him and grow taut like a slingshot. Out of the corner of the eye, he saw Sloane nod. He charged. Thirty feet, ten feet, five feet…

Impact.

His boots dented the metal when he landed. He felt the scaffolding wobble under the force of the collision. Tiny sparks bounced off the textured steel of the platform, the sniper’s shields quickly depleting under Sloane and Kaetus’ fire. Ryder’s hands shook like hell, his body running hot with biotics. The energy in him pulsed--once, twice--his muscles tensed and the pressure built to an unmanageable limit.

Sloane cursed from somewhere behind him. With her last bullet, she’d cracked the shields of the kett snipers. Ryder saw the blue sheen of their shields vanish, and he acted: the nova blast exploded outwards his body. He was ground zero. The force felt like it was pulling flesh from his bones, but for him, it was only figurative. The sharpshooter had literally spattered across the wall, all but recognizable.

The second sniper, cornered and having barely survived the blast, brought the butt of his rifle into Ryder’s gut. With no barrier, he took that force directly in the armor. Ryder fumbled with his gun. His hands were clammy and shaking. He fired, once--it was hard to miss at this range.

_ Pathfinder, duck _ .

Something primal reacted in him before his frontal lobe could. Ryder hit the ground before he processed what he was doing. As he did, he heard the rumbling of rapidly approaching footsteps, quadrupedal--how had he missed it?--leap and tackle the air where he had just been standing.

He scrabbled to his feet, his armor loudly clanging against the metal of the wobbling platform. He could feel gravity begin to move in the direction where his attacker had landed. Facing Ryder was a fiend: its massive bulk had started to bend the platform they were standing on. Its saliva dripped in slow strands from its mouth. Its huge, gorilla-like arms were crusted over with kett plates, and tiny eyes burned with blind rage, embedded deep within the coral-like growths that covered its skull. The fiend’s torso heaved under a thick, purple hide as it prepared for another charge.

Ryder’s head buzzed. The tremor in his hands was spreading to the rest of his body. Moving more on instinct than training, he fired off an inefficient blast of biotic energy to  _ get the hell out of there _ , not caring where he ended up. The fiend was no slower. It lunged, catching Ryder just as he started to gain momentum. Its enormous paw batted him out of the air like a ragdoll, and he bounced along the platform until his trajectory was ungracefully stopped by a portion of metal railing.

The fiend lumbered over to him, planting its giant--hands? paws?--on either side of his head. Each foot was easily two, three times the size of his head. Its huge body barely fit on the narrow scaffolding. The railing creaked and bent to accommodate its weight. As the fiend growled, a deep bass sound that shook Ryder’s teeth, he realized the sound he’d heard earlier wasn’t a generator. For not the first time since they’d arrived at Heleus, Ryder felt a very basic emotion, one he imagined his ancestors millions of years ago felt, too, before they found any mass relays or alien species: a fear of the unknown.

The fiend roared.

“Fuck,” Ryder whispered nonsensically, his voice high and strained. He saw his father taking off his helmet. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes. Something wet splashed onto his armor. There was gunfire in the distance. The ground shook, twisted, and creaked, and his tangled position in the railing was all that kept him from being knocked off the violently swaying platform.

_ Pathfinder _ .

_ I did my best, SAM _ .

_ Yes _ , SAM agreed, after a pause.  _ You did.  _ The AI seemed thoughtful, and after a beat, it continued:  _ I do not want to break this news to you, as this is an observation that may upset you. And without a scan, I cannot be certain, but... _

_ What? _

_ I believe you are currently covered in several liters of the fiend’s bodily fluids. _

Ryder snapped his eyes open.

“Pathfinder!” A number of voices called out to him from below? Above? He had no sense of direction anymore.

Metal creaked. He saw the lifeless body of the fiend backed up into the railing opposite him. Blood poured from its wounds and spread across the platform. Gravity took most of it down and away from him, but it was impossible to completely avoid the gore of the battle. The fiend also seemed to have relieved itself in its death.

Ryder cringed.

He carefully got to his feet, every part of his body sore and aching. There were hands on him, helping him up. Sloane Kelly looked him over with her mismatched eyes, a small trickle of blood sliding down her cheek. Kaetus wiped his blood-covered talons on his armor.

“You look like shit,” Sloane said.

“Thank you.” Someone helped him pull off his helmet, and he gasped for air. 

“You might actually be more useful than those Nexus bureaucrats.” Ryder wouldn’t have described Sloane’s expression as one of  _ approval _ , but it lacked some of the disgust she’d worn when they’d first met. His heart raced in a funny sort of way. He was making progress.

“What happened here stays here,” Kaetus reminded him, interrupting his thoughts. “The official story is that the Outcasts drove out all the kett when we arrived.”

Ryder nodded, some of the blood beginning to return to his brain. Everything hurt worse now that he was capable of processing it. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Meet me back at the Port to talk about your reward,” Sloane said. She turned, and without further ceremony, picked up a fallen kett soldier by the armor to inspect its corpse. “Ugly motherfuckers. Think we could burn the bodies?”

***

Ryder collapsed in the back seat of the Nomad.

“You’re not--”

“No.”

Kosta and Drack exchanged glances, then immediately scrambled over each other for the driver-side door.

Kosta was faster, and younger, but Drack had about 500 pounds of muscle on him. Harper smartly took advantage of the fighting to claim shotgun, and a minute later, Kosta slunk into the back seat next to him.

“Do you think they have car washes here on Kadara?” Kosta glanced at Ryder’s blood-stained armor and scooted a little closer to the door.

The Nomad’s engine roared to life, and Drack laughed.

_ Dealt with the kett _ , Ryder managed to type out on his omni-tool.  _ Sloane’s willing to talk _ . He sent the message off to Vidal, tired but nonetheless pleased with his work. The Nomad took off at a comfortable speed, gliding through the Kadara wasteland. Ryder closed his eyes and sunk into his seat. Once they dealt with Vehn Terev and the Archon, he imagined the outpost they could build here. They could finally make progress on the vision that had brought them here in the first place--his father’s vision.  _ His  _ vision.

_ Good work _ . Ryder’s omni-tool pinged with a new message.  _ By the way, Vehn Terev is dead _ .

The hum of the Nomad’s wheels grew silent then, replaced by the whir of the vehicle treading air. Harper and Kosta screamed. Drack laughed. Ryder’s stomach flipped in zero-G. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ Vehn Terev is dead--Roekaar. They cut Sloane’s cameras, but our bugs picked up everything anyways. Sloane and Kaetus were out in the badlands fighting kett with the Pathfinder. Agent slit the guard’s throat, took the keys from his body while Terev begged for his life. Mentioned a transponder he buried. They killed him anyway and left his body as a message for us aliens. _

_ Sloane’s going to be pissed. Heard she was going to break out her private stash of contraband at the execution, too. _

***

“Good work on the Remnant vault, Ryder.” Vidal raised a tin glass to him. Ryder dipped his head, raising and drinking. “We may finally get drinkable water from Kadara yet.”

Ryder hoped so, because whatever they were distilling made even the toxic sulfur water seem appealing. He grimaced into his glass.

“Let’s hope Sloane feels the same way.”

“She’ll lose profits from water trading in the short-term, but she’s no fool. Kadara Port needs clean water to last.” Vidal swirled his drink, unimpressed with whatever dregs were left at its bottom.

It didn’t surprise him that Vidal was already thinking three steps ahead. Ryder thought he caught an edge of disapproval in his voice.

“You think Sloane doesn’t want Kadara to make it?”

Vidal looked up at him from the rim of his cup. “I can’t tell you what she wants, Ryder, but I know how she acts--and she’s acting like she wants war with the Nexus. The Outcasts think they can win, because they think they’ve already won Kadara.”

Hadn’t they? Ryder impatiently tapped his foot to the pulse of the club music outside. They had needed his help to deal with the kett, and the Roekaar had killed Vehn Terev right under their noses. He’d also seen Collective raiders scrap with the Outcasts out in the badlands. Perhaps ownership of Kadara was still up in the air.

Ryder shook his head and filed away the thought for later. “It’s not too late for an alliance between the Outcasts and the Nexus.”

“If she tried to consolidate power on Kadara, would you back her?” Vidal asked. His body language was relaxed--as relaxed as anyone could afford to be on Kadara, anyways--but there was something else behind the question that Ryder couldn’t place. Was he really asking about Sloane?

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m not sure there’s an alternative. Why?”

Vidal outstretched an arm, gesturing like it was obvious:  _ look around you _ . “We’re in a bit of a shithole, Ryder, if you haven’t noticed. I’d call it  _ my  _ shithole, but as long as Sloane’s in power, it’s not.” He smiled and shook his head. “Are you happy with how Sloane operates things here?”

Ryder distinctly felt like he was being tested, but he wasn’t sure what Vidal wanted to hear. “I don’t think the Nexus should come in and forcibly occupy the Port, if that’s what you’re asking. That doesn’t mean I like Sloane, but we don’t have much of a choice. Who are you thinking? The Roekaar? The Charlatan?”

Ryder was surprised to see Vidal laugh. “A knife in the front, or the back? No, you couldn’t trust either of them.”

“The local angara?” Ryder said.

Vidal grinned, this time baring teeth. Ryder thought it was genuine, and it unnerved him that a professional liar could also be so transparent. “And you said you weren’t an idealist.”

“It’s my job to be,” Ryder said, waving off the accusation. “And besides, that’s not so far-fetched, is it? I don’t mean we should lie down and let the Roekaar take the planet, but… Well, it would make any future outpost look far less aggressive.”

Vidal shrugged. “Some people respond to aggressive.”

“Do you?”

Vidal raised his eyebrows. He seemed to consider it. “I’m good at reading the signs,” he said finally. “I’m willing to wait for the right moment to strike.”

His omni-tool lit up then, and Vidal turned his attention towards the device on his wrist. “Speaking of which,” he said. “There’s been new murders at Charybdis Point.” He looked up at Ryder and tipped his head back, downing his drink. Ryder watched him swallow and wipe his lips on the back of his hand. “Ready to go?”

***

Three days ago, Vehn Terev was murdered in Kadara Port. He was found over an hour after his death, when Sloane Kelly personally escorted Ryder to his holding cell to speak to him. Sloane was furious. She’d planned to execute him later that week. The wall he was going to be lined up against had been scrubbed clean of graffiti for this very purpose. They’d even been planning to set up benches for people to watch.

She relayed all this to Ryder as she stomped around the prison cell. Kaetus tried to pull up the security logs, but the cameras had been cut at the time of the murder. Sloane swore up and down as she paced the length of the holding cells. This wasn’t the first unsanctioned murder on her port, and it wouldn’t be the last. Whoever did this was trying to undermine her authority.

Ryder spoke up. “Let me fix this.”

Sloane glared at him.

He quickly amended: “I can’t bring him back. But I can figure out who did this and make sure it never happens again. You can have a new scapegoat for your party.”

“A boy scout, are we?”

Ryder had felt naive and underqualified for most of his life. He felt it acutely now, surrounded by murder and politics on an alien planet, six hundred years away from anything that resembled law and order. “I need information on Vehn Terev.” He sighed. “Maybe his killers knew something we didn’t.”

“You’re awfully dedicated to getting answers from a dead man,” Sloane observed. “Are there no other traitors you can wring information out of?”

Ryder felt a massive headache coming on. It hadn’t taken long for him to associate death with paperwork since arriving in Andromeda. The new galaxy had doled out both in generous portions.

“He was it, then? The Initiative and the Resistance’s last hope.” Sloane laughed, but there was little mirth in her eyes. Like she didn’t even find the situation worth lording over them. 

“We have other leads,” Ryder lied unconvincingly. He just needed some time to figure this out. Terev must have left  _ something  _ behind. “I helped you with your kett problem, and now talking to Terev is no longer in the picture. I want to prove that the Initiative is here to work with the Outcasts, not against them.” Ryder inhaled. “There are these Remnant vaults scattered throughout Heleus. They have terraforming capacities.”

Sloane raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

And Ryder had asked, in a show of fealty, for permission to investigate Kadara’s monoliths. Sloane had agreed, pleased by the flattery. After dealing with Sloane, it had been a quick stop to discuss the murders with Vidal, then straight into a relentless race through the Kadara badlands. While Vidal gathered information, Ryder led a small team into Kadara’s vault--like always: interface, duck, and shoot. Rinse and repeat. 

***

On their way to Charybdis Point, Vidal tapped Ryder on the shoulder. He pointed out the window of the Nomad at a small settlement just out of the way of their path.

Ryder looked. Vidal, as a guest, had been extended the courtesy of riding shotgun. Sitting in the back with their arms crossed, pretending to varying degrees that they weren’t eyeing Vidal with suspicion, were Harper and Jaal.

Ryder appreciated Harper’s distrust. He liked that they were both optimistic pessimists. They agreed on most things, including that Ryder shouldn’t have taken his father’s place, but also that they would never talk about it.

Jaal, for his part, was more open with his emotions--a trait that Ryder found just as alien in Heleus as he had in Sol.

“Over there.”

At the foot of the building was a pile of bodies. Ryder felt his stomach turn. As he slowly approached the ramp in the Nomad, he could make out their blue-purple crowns and digitigrade legs. They were all angara.

Jaal was the first one out of the vehicle. Harper stepped out with her shoulders squared and brandishing her M-28.

“Scanning the bodies could provide a clue,” SAM prompted. After a pause, he added, in their private channel:  _ Much like the time I heightened your senses, I can also lower the sensitivity of your olfactory sensory neurons. _

Ryder shook his head. For some reason, it felt wrong. Why should he turn away from smell when there were people who were dead? An irrational thought.

“They’re all dead,” Jaal growled. “How did this happen?”

Vidal warily extracted himself from the Nomad. He glanced around the surrounding high ground, either admiring the view or, more likely, scanning for an ambush. “No wonder I hadn’t heard from my contacts out here,” he finally remarked, with the same nonchalance of discovering an unsent email in his drafts.

Ryder pointed his omni-tool’s scanner towards the bodies. 

“Blackened stomach and ulceration,” SAM spoke aloud. “Consistent with poisoning by sulfuric acid. Most likely from consuming Kadara’s water without proper filtration.”

Ryder frowned. “I thought we’d activated the vault.” As he said this, he could still smell the heavy smell of sulfur in the air. It would take more than a day for a planet’s water supply to be properly filtered. He knew this.

“These are angara,” Jaal said sadly, shaking his head. “They should have known how to filter Kadara’s water.”

Ryder watched as Vidal walked towards the building opposite the bodies. Harper followed close behind with her gun.

“Pathfinder, I would recommend examining the settlement’s water filters.” Ryder could feel SAM directing him further into the building with the dead angara. Vidal disappeared into the structure across the road.

Ryder stepped around the dead bodies and into the interior of the building. It was largely clean and untouched, though a fine layer of dust covered everything.

“The water filter,” Jaal said, pointing to a large piece of angaran machinery attached to a series of pipes and pumps that led into the ground. Ryder swung his omni-tool up to the apparatus.

“Someone has tampered with the filter,” SAM concluded. “The angara ingested only enough sulfuric acid to be lethal over time.”

Ryder saw Jaal’s hands clench into fists. “Ryder…”

It was clear he was upset. And understandably so. Ryder felt terrible, too--he couldn’t help but hope it wasn’t the work of any Milky Way colonists. Their relationship with the angara was rocky enough already.

“I’m sorry, Jaal,” Ryder said. He considered putting out a hand on Jaal’s shoulder, but wondered if it would be appropriate. And in that moment of hesitation, the opportunity passed. He made a fist with his hand and let it fall to his side. “We’ll make this right.”

Jaal shook his head. If he was going to respond, Ryder didn’t get a chance to hear. From across the valley, Vidal called out, “Over here!”

Outside, Vidal jogged across the dirt path waving a datapad. Harper’s brow was furrowed and her gun gripped closer to her chest.

“The angara were trading water with Outlaws at Charybdis Point,” he explained. “They’d tried to steal the filters before and failed. I think the culprits here are clear, no?”

“It seems so. You think the murders there are related?”

Vidal’s expression was neutral. “If the murderers are Roekaar, as I suspect, then it would be a possible motive.”

“Right.” Ryder grimaced. “Okay. Let’s move out to Charybdis, then,” he said. He motioned for his squadmates to join him in the Nomad.

“The bodies,” Jaal said. “We cannot leave them like this. We should identify them and inform their families.”

“Shit, yeah.” Ryder rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. What had Addison said about delegating? Or maybe she was delegating by pushing everything on Ryder.

Vidal gently moved Ryder away from the conversation with a hand on his shoulder. His gloved pinky brushed the exposed skin on his neck. Ryder felt dizzy.

“My people will take care of it.” Vidal clapped the side of Jaal’s arm in reassurance. “I have a friend, Keema--Kadara’s angaran representative. She’ll make sure the right people are informed.”

Jaal nodded, his expression warring between distrust and gratitude. “Thank you,” he finally said.

Vidal smiled, a flawless imitation of sympathy, and peeled himself away from the situation. He was already by the Nomad’s passenger side door when Ryder looked up, striking up an effortlessly handsome contrapposto. Something about him made Ryder’s gut burn. He felt bile rise in his throat.

“Let’s move out,” Vidal said, his hair still unmussed by his brief jog earlier.

Ryder stared. He got in the car. He hated him.


	4. Chapter 4

Reyes typically found violence distasteful, and Charybdis Point was no exception. The bodies of the Milky Way colonists were barely recognizable under the blood. He never thought he’d see what lay underneath a krogan’s head plate. Turns out, the same yellow neuroconductive fluid as anyone else.

Though he wouldn’t have put this kind of brutality past the exiles, the angaran footprints, knife wounds, and Roekaar propaganda left at the scene seemed rather damning. Left on the blood-spattered terminal was a manifesto that decried the crimes committed by Milky Way colonists, including their most recent murders involving tampered and stolen water filters. Reyes didn’t have to check his sources to know their accusations were, if slightly exaggerated, for the most part accurate. 

While Ryder scanned the disfigured bodies and tried to keep the contents of his stomach down, Reyes took the opportunity to check out another point of interest: Vehn Terev’s transponder. The coordinates he’d used to unsuccessfully bargain for his life had turned out to be close by. Reyes double-checked the location in his omni-tool, then extricated himself from the crime scene and made his way towards a nondescript maintenance building across from the parked Nomad.

Terev had mentioned burying the transponder. As Reyes scanned the building, he could see that its architecture was so that it rested on elevated stilts, leaving a gap between the dirt and the floor of the structure. In its shade, the temperature was notably cooler. He felt the dirt squelch under his boots. His omni-tool pinged that the coordinates were nearby; a couple of meters away, Reyes spotted a patch of disturbed earth. With his gloved hands, he scooped away the soft loam, the smell of sulfur rising from the ground itself.

Reyes felt his fingers hit something hard and synthetic. With a quick glance behind him--the others were preoccupied with the scene of the murder--he pushed away the dirt faster, revealing a mud-stained kett transponder. He’d only seen one before, a broken device that one of his agents had acquired from a crashed shuttle. Wiping away the dirt from the central screen with his thumb, he recognized that the transponder was out of power. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Reyes saw the Pathfinder team growing restless by the crime scene. He tucked the transponder away in the front pocket of his armor and jogged over casually.

“No bodies this way,” Reyes assured the group.

Ryder squinted at him, almost as if he’d found his absence suspicious, but the expression was quickly replaced by a mask of placid diplomacy.

_ Always the politician _ , Reyes thought. He found the pretense endearing, if incredibly transparent and naive for an outlaw planet.

“So,” Ryder said. “Angaran footprints, blood, and a Roekaar manifesto left on the terminal. Nothing surprising there.” He shook his head. “This doesn’t bring us any closer to the kett.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Reyes said. He pointed with his thumb to the maintenance building behind him. His scouts had actually cased the crime scene before he’d come out here with Ryder. Like he’d said, the culprits were obvious. “The water filters that the colonists stole are missing. I’d bet good money that the Roekaar are behind that, too.”

Though Ryder’s angaran companion--Jaal, he’d introduced himself as--had since composed himself, there remained an air of grief about him. Where the Initiative were emotionally sterile sycophants, Reyes found the angara refreshingly sincere. They were plenty capable of stabbing you in the back, but they’d face you as they did it. He found it an admirable quality.

Jaal spoke: “Why would the Roekaar need additional water filters? The local angara should already have the means to purify Kadara’s water.”

“If the Roekaar really are local, they know just how valuable a working filter is,” Reyes explained. “Sloane regulates nearly all the clean water on Kadara. Water is rare, so it’s expensive; control the water, you control the credits. Control the credits, and, well, you control the Port.” Reyes grinned. “With extra filters, the Roekaar are either saving a pretty penny right now, or they’re turning a healthy profit. Either way, that’s a trail of credits we can follow.”

“It’s been  _ days  _ since the murders.” The blonde human woman--Cora Harper, but Ryder called her “Lieutenant” without fail, a holdover of military service on both their parts--spoke up. Reyes recalled seeing her at the senior Ryder’s side when the arks were boarding. She was Alec Ryder’s second-in-command and, from what he understood, second-in-line to the position of human Pathfinder. Why the line of succession was so strictly observed on the Nexus and not the Hyperion was one of the Initiative’s many mysteries. “There’s hardly enough data to try and pin down the location of the Roekaar base,” she said.

The lieutenant’s voice was even, but her face was stern. She was clever, too. He could see why the Ryders trusted her.

“Everything on this planet is regulated by Sloane,” Reyes began. “Water, for one, but also rations, booze, fuel. Of course, there’s never enough to go around. When people need things exchanged under the table, that’s where my people come in.” He gestured his hands around him, palms facing the sky.

“Smugglers, you mean.” She frowned.

“Yes,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. “I have eyes on every trade route in the port. Every contract, every piece of contraband, every drunk credit chit thrown at a Tartarus dancer. If it has a price, I can tell you who’s buying it and where it’s going”

Ryder was quiet. His companions eyed Reyes like they suspected he was showing off (and he was, a little), but they seemed to be deliberately deferring to their Pathfinder.

“So you control the credits,” Ryder said. There was a hint of accusation to his voice, one that he’d likely fought hard to keep out of it. But the implication was clear:  _ so you control Kadara _ .

_ Not yet _ , Reyes thought.

“I  _ know  _ the money on Kadara. There’s a difference,” Reyes deflected. He pulled up the data on his omni-tool. “I have the information, but I’ll need time to extrapolate the location of any secret bases from it. Unless,” and he tilted his head towards Ryder, “I had the help of a sophisticated AI.”

SAM was a poorly kept secret amongst the Initiative. Reyes had hardly believed it at first, but in retrospect, it seemed entirely plausible that a company set on pushing the boundaries of the galaxy had done so to push a few more. It was the most powerful thing they’d brought to Andromeda, even more dangerous than the guns and krogan and credits, and it had just fallen into Ryder’s lap by accident. Reyes had given up two weeks of rations on the Nexus for a pistol.

“Mr. Vidal is correct.” SAM spoke over Ryder’s omni-tool. “If his data is as thorough as he suggests, I may be able to predict possible locations of the Roekaar base.”

Ryder seemed to consider this. If the rumors he’d heard were true, SAM wasn’t just a computer. It was part of Ryder’s biology. Ryder’s jaw twitched, responding to some conversation Reyes couldn’t hear. “So we get access to your information--what are you getting in return?”

Reyes gave his most winning smile. “I’m being generous, Ryder.” This made the Pathfinder’s brows furrow further. “Why were you running errands for Sloane? It never hurts to be owed a favor from power.”

Ryder grimaced at the word, as though being one of the most powerful men in the galaxy conflicted with his self-image. If he wasn’t used to it by now, he would have to be soon. “I did it to make Kadara safer,” Ryder said. Now he was just being difficult on purpose.

“Of course,” Reyes said, parrying the bait. “And if the Roekaar are taken care of, that’s another item off your list. So, do we have a deal?” He stuck out a gloved hand. It was still smudged with dirt from his digging earlier.

Ryder’s gaze flicked from his hand to his eyes. If he was looking for signs of subterfuge, he’d find none. Reyes’ reputation as an information broker relied on him being in the business of truths, not lies.

“We have a deal, Vidal.” Ryder took his hand, a firm, quick grip with two shakes. Reyes wondered if the senior Ryder’s team had had mandatory PR training. When they pulled away, Reyes saw that some of the dirt had transferred onto Ryder’s hand. He twisted his lips into a smile.

“Please. Call me Reyes.”

***

Reyes had gotten his people to rig the explosives earlier that day.

It was just under forty-eight hours since Charybdis Point, a new record for scouting, infiltrating, and trapping an enemy base. With SAM’s help, the work of approximating the Roekaar base went quickly. Narrowed down to three locations in the north and southwest of Kadara, Reyes ruled out immediately the former--nothing but territorial, trigger-happy water traders for miles--and settled on the latter. In Kadara’s southwest was a mountain range riddled with caves, a favored hideout for many bandits, exiles, and other shady types. He was intimately familiar with it himself.

Now, he was nestled deep within those mountains, crouched in the underground cavern he’d correctly identified as the Roekaar base. A plastic detonator was securely clipped to the back of his belt, disproportionately light for the destructive capacity it held. One click, and several rigged canisters would explode in a corona of deadly force and heat, easily blasting anything organic within the central chamber.

The only problem? The human Pathfinder and his crew were standing directly in the blast radius, unarmed and with their hands up in surrender.

Somehow, by the time Reyes had arrived at their hideout, the Roekaar had taken Ryder’s weapons and shepherded his squad by gunpoint to the center of the rigged cavern. They’d practically left the door wide open for Reyes, probably in disbelief by what appeared to be an alien leader  _ turning himself in _ .

From where Reyes was crouched, he could see that Ryder was surrounded. A semicircle of armed angara all had their weapons trained on him. Next to him were the Lieutenant, as always, and an asari he recognized only from the ID photos that had accompanied dossiers of Ryder’s crew. Three biotics, including Ryder; Reyes recognized immediately that he’d put together a crew that could be effective even without weapons.

Had Ryder  _ planned  _ to give up his guns?

An angaran woman emerged from the circle of armed Roekaar.  _ Farah Noskos _ , Reyes thought. She had little love for Milky Way aliens, and even less for angaran collaborators. That made Keema public enemy number one in her eyes. A Roekaar “assassin” had given up Noskos’ name after they apprehended him trying to break into Keema’s flat. He’d looked barely out of his teens and had never even met Noskos, as they quickly found out. His family had been promised protection by Sloane, and instead they’d traded the kett for another alien bully. It wasn’t an uncommon story out in the badlands. Unable to pay the appropriate protection fees, Sloane’s men had cut off their rations.

The boy said it was Roekaar leaflets that convinced him, but Reyes knew from firsthand experience that hunger was more persuasive than any silver tongue.

“I just want to talk,” Ryder said. His voice rang clear in the expanse of the cave.

“How unsurprising,” Noskos said. In one hand, she held a glittering blade with a dark handle. “Your kind have done nothing  _ but _ talk since you arrived. We’ve grown tired of your lies and empty promises.”

Ryder stood his ground, straightening his back and meeting her eye. “I’m not here on behalf of the Outcasts. Sloane Kelly doesn’t represent the Initiative.  _ We _ want to make things right.”

“‘Make things right?’ Tell me, Pathfinder, how can you make right the loss of our entire planet?” Noskos shook her head. Her voice was heavy with exhaustion, but it was level. A quiet, collected anger simmered under her words. “How many credits are our lost brothers and sisters worth? How many months of rations, how many predatory contracts? You offer us only futures where we are visitors in our own home.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Ryder said. He sounded appropriately remorseful. “I know your people have endured a lot. An immeasurable amount. It’s a debt that the Initiative will still be paying long after you and I are both dead.” He paused, glancing at the floor before meeting her eyes. “We can’t change what’s happened, but we can work together for a better future.”

Noskos stared at him with contempt. “Is this the same deal that was offered to the krogan? I have heard your galaxy’s story: a species made into weapons and marked for extinction when their use was expended. I have heard that our galaxy was promised as a new start for your kind--the krogan were promised the same before they were used and cast aside, just as they had been before. That is why they settle Elaaden.”

Ryder’s asari companion threw up her arms in frustration. “That wasn’t us!” Harper glared at her. If Reyes recalled, she had never been military.

“Yes,” Ryder agreed, not bothering to glance back at his crew. One of the Roekaar prodded the asari with the muzzle of their gun. “That was different leadership.”

“You are all the same,” Noskos said. Her eyes narrowed, and her gaze was intense--but there was an edge of resignation to her voice. It was more observation than accusation. “You think you can come here and package our destruction in gilded words, use us as long as we lend legitimacy to the throne of Kadara. But when we expend our usefulness, what will happen to us? Will we be doomed to extinction like your krogan? Kicked out of our homes like your exiles?” Noskos’ hand flexed around the grip of the knife. “I will not sit idly by while my people are used and discarded like a child’s toy.”

Ryder stepped forward. Immediately, a litany of guns being cocked echoed through the chamber. He stopped and raised his hands again in deference. “I want things to be different. We, the aliens, can’t leave, not now, but neither of us can stay while the kett threaten everything living.”

“How convenient for you there is a greater evil than yourselves.”

“The Initiative isn’t going anywhere,” Ryder warned. “Whether you, or I, or Sloane Kelly want it to or not. What’s left is the question of who’s going to be at the negotiations table.”

Noskos twirled the blade in her hand once. Twice. Its razor edge gleamed in the artificial lights of the cavern. “Is that a threat, alien?”

Ryder met her gaze. “It’s an invitation.”

A strange look passed over Noskos’ face. Her blade-wielding hand faltered. “I’ve seen such invitations before.” Reyes saw her readjust her grip on the knife. “And I know how they entail, Pathfinder: it will be one of our heads on the platter. I’d rather it not be mine.” Noskos lunged.

“Ryder, shield!”

Before Reyes could even finish his sentence, Ryder’s body was ablaze with biotic energy. It was not, as he’d hoped, a shield; Noskos went high with her blade, and Ryder, propelled by his biotics, ducked out of the way faster than humanly possible. He spun several feet away from where Noskos landed, out of her reach.

The cavern erupted in gunfire.

_ Shit _ . His cover blown, Reyes fired off a few rounds at the congregated Roekaar. His shots went wide, pockmarking the cavern stone with glowing bullet holes. Without a shield, he wouldn’t be able to detonate the charges without blowing up his allies. 

Reyes watched the Lieutenant charge into a group of Roekaar, her asari companion following up with her own shockwave of biotic energy before ducking behind a barricade of steel panels. Bodies slammed into rock, hard enough to knock debris from the ceiling.

With his back pressed against the cool metal of a shipping crate, Reyes pulled a clip of ammunition from his vest. He reloaded his gun.  _ Shit. Shit, shit, shit _ . Bullets spattered against the opposite side of the crate, ringing in his ears. He was pinned down. He waited for the telltale hiss of a clip emptying before daring to peek from his cover.

Across the cavern, Ryder was wielding a shotgun with shaking hands and going toe-to-toe with two rifle-bearing Roekaar agents. Reyes watched as he took down an assailant with a blast to the torso, then danced around cover as best he could. He was buying time, waiting for his biotics to cool.

In the cavern’s center, the Lieutenant and asari were engaged in a messy brawl with the bulk of the Roekaar forces. Noskos clutched a bloody wound in her side as she continued to shout orders. A leader to the end. Ryder’s squadmates were crouched behind a flimsy piece of sheet metal that was rapidly degrading under fire.

“I need a pull, Peebee!” the Lieutenant barked. She fired a blast from cover, but her shotgun’s pellets scattered with minimal effect from her distance. A bullet pierced a section of the metal just by her head. “Now!”

“Shit! Give me a second--”

But the sheet metal was growing increasingly perforated, and the Lieutenant was quickly losing cover. She seemed to realize that she’d have no choice but to leap. Reyes saw the biotics pull taut around her as she prepared to launch herself back into the fray. “I said now, Peebee!”

Peebee frantically made a motion with her arms and threw a weak blast of biotic energy from her rapidly disintegrating cover. The Lieutenant was already charging. “I was in the middle of a hack!” the asari shouted. Her biotic orb soared across the cavern, going wide. It wouldn’t have made a difference, anyways--its charge fizzled out halfway in its trajectory.

The Lieutenant landed with a powerful wave of biotic energy, corralling the Roekaar fighters into the center of the cavern. They stumbled, but without the pull of a biotic restraint, they easily regained their footing. The Lieutenant was stranded in enemy territory without shields.

Reyes forced back one of her assailants with covering fire, but the Lieutenant was still facing four or five soldiers across from her. Peebee ran for cover as she tried to finish her hack. A stray bullet hit her shield--”Shit!” she yelped--and she dived for the closest barricade.

The mission was going very, very wrong.

There was a loud, dull boom to his left--Reyes watched as Ryder recovered from a biotic charge that had landed just by his hiding spot. Ryder scrambled into cover next to him. At this proximity, Reyes could see his face drenched with sweat and his hair slicked flat against his forehead.

“Ryder,” he said quickly. “I have explosives rigged throughout the cave, but I can’t set them off without taking out the entire room. We need a shield.”

Ryder frowned--an impressive feat, considering how hard he was panting. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Neither was you attempting an unarmed negotiation.”

“I saw the chance, and I took it,” Ryder snapped back. Perhaps Reyes was being unfair. The other man had gotten farther than he’d expected, and it had required a strength of character that Reyes hadn’t been sure he’d possessed. Reyes was almost impressed. “Anyways, my biotics are nearly tapped. I physically can’t make a barrier strong enough to shield us.” Suddenly he paused, a hand going to his ear like he was taking a call. His eyebrows knitted together. “Are you sure, SAM?”

The AI. Reyes didn’t know what the hell it had to contribute right now.

Ryder paused, nodded, and began to get to his feet. Reyes could feel the static in the air around them. He felt his hair floating in the field. Ryder’s body flashed with biotics as he stepped out from the crate, a perceptible tremor running through his entire form. Ryder placed his palms out, perpendicular to the floor, and the mass effect field emerged from his hands; as he moved them outwards, the energy began to stretch, a undulating sheet of dark energy. Ryder, with great effort, started to push the biotic wall towards the enemy lines.

The Lieutenant was desperately weaving sputtering shields around herself as she moved from cover to cover. She took the cue immediately: with a final shot over an eviscerated crate, she leapt past the barrier and rolled to safety. Peebee followed suit soon afterwards. Ripples emerged from where they had passed, but the field maintained its integrity. Ryder’s body looked to be on the brink of convulsing. 

“Reyes!” Ryder grunted through gritted teeth.

Reyes’ hand was already reaching for the detonator. Bullets left tiny ripples on the mass effect field, like rain spattering across a puddle. The Lieutenant collapsed to the ground, too tapped to do anything but watch in disbelief. Blood trickled from a wound on Peebee’s head and ran into her dark mask. Ryder’s knee buckled.

Reyes’ thumb found the button.

...

And the world went white.

***

Outside, the air was fresh, and not just by Kadara’s standards. The Vault had accomplished some serious terraforming work in the past week, thanks to whatever Remnant magic Ryder had worked.

Now, Ryder was clutching the side of a vomit-colored rock as he doubled over in exhaustion. His body heaved a few times, like it was trying to expulse something to match the planet’s scenery, but nothing seemed to come out. After some painful-looking shaking and convulsing, Ryder finally seemed to accept his fate as he collapsed to the ground. He let his head rest against the rock.

Peebee and Lieutenant Harper weren’t far. Peebee was sitting in the grass, leaning against the Nomad’s wheels as she used her omni-tool to patch herself up with medi-gel. Her free hand impatiently drummed against her leg as she waited for the process to complete. Next to her, the Lieutenant rummaged for something within the vehicle. Reyes heard a familiar crinkle of foil wrappers as she grabbed fistfuls of nutrient bars and tore one of them open with her teeth. She held the bar in her teeth as she wordlessly tossed two towards Peebee.

Peebee mumbled something like, “Thanks,” before sighing dramatically and stretching her limbs like a cat. She slumped against the Nomad, but not before glancing at Reyes, then Ryder, then back.

The Lieutenant followed her gaze. She made a point to make eye contact with Reyes as she walked past him towards her Pathfinder.

“Eat,” she said, her mouth still occupied by a nutrient bar. She squatted in the grass next to Ryder and held one out to him. She swallowed the rest of her own. “Your nervous system’s shot to hell. I’m surprised SAM’s still keeping you conscious.”

They both looked out into the horizon then, apparently hearing something SAM was saying over a private Pathfinder team channel. The Lieutenant smiled fondly into space, and Ryder took the nutrient bar from her hands. She patted his upper arm, armored glove on his armored shoulder. Two soldiers after a battle. 

The Lieutenant gave his arm a squeeze. Ryder tapped her hand awkwardly in gratitude, and she rose from her sitting position beside him. “Catch your breath, then make sure T’Perro gets a good look at you,” she said.

“Yeah, I will.”

She turned around then, giving Reyes an untrusting once-over as she made her way back to the Nomad. “Heads up,” she called.

With two hands, Reyes caught the nutrient bar. He threw back a two-fingered salute in the Lieutenant’s direction, and he thought he saw the corner of her lip twitch in an aborted smile. He nodded at her as she passed, taking up her previous position next to an exhausted Ryder.

“Well,” he said to the Kadara plains stretching out below them. “It seems like everyone made it out in one piece.”

Ryder spun the wrapped nutrient bar between two fingers. Food was clearly the farthest thing from his mind. “Not everyone,” he said. His face was pensive, brows furrowed and lips pursed in concentration. An involuntary shudder ran through him, likely aftershocks from his little light show earlier. His hand instinctively reached for the back of his neck.

Reyes looked him in the eyes when he spoke--to his surprise, Ryder looked back. “You came here to stop the murders that were happening on Kadara. You found the culprit, tracked them down to their base, and stopped them. You saved innocent lives, Ryder.”

Ryder laughed hollowly. “No one here is innocent. You saw how the Charybdis Point settlers murdered those angara. It wasn’t the first injustice, and it won’t be the last.”

“That doesn’t justify what the Roekaar did,” he said. “More violence isn’t the answer.”

“Isn’t that what we did, when we killed them all?”

“No.” At this, Reyes’ voice was firm. “We shed blood to ensure peace on Kadara. There’s a difference.” He straightened a little. The ends justified the means. They would have to.

Ryder ran his hands down his face. “Is there ever going to be an end to all this? If this keeps up, it’s not just the Initiative that the Outcasts are going to go to war with. It’s the angara, the exiles--all of Kadara. Sloane thinks she can be the biggest fish in the pond”--then he frowned, as though realizing something--”No, she thinks she  _ has  _ to be.” He sighed and rubbed at the persistent dark circles that decorated his features. “How did we get this far from where we started?”

“What were you expecting?”

“Andromeda was supposed to be our second chance,” Ryder said. “It was supposed to be our new start. A new way of life.” He looked down at his palms. “But the Roekaar were right. We’re just making the same mistakes over and over again. We lie, we kill, we  _ fuck up  _ the same way we did 600 years ago.”

Reyes thought about this. It was true. Six hundred years in hibernation hadn’t changed people--that was the point of stasis, after all. But there was no denying that Reyes wasn’t the same person that had entered that cryo pod in the Milky Way; and, he imagined, neither was Ryder.

“A new galaxy won’t make us different people,” he finally said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t change. It’s not time or space that changes us, Ryder. It’s our blood, our sweat, our grit--it’s us. It’s people that change people.”

Reyes wasn’t in the business of lying, but this was more truth than he usually dealt in. Before he could back out of the unexpected honesty he found himself in, he clapped a hand on Ryder’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. Ryder nodded his head--in agreement? Resignation? Exhaustion?--and leaned into his touch. “I was hoping you’d tell me there was an inevitable happy ending at the end of all this,” he said.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Reyes said. He smiled in sympathy. The universe was already full of things that were inevitable. Death, endings, entropy--after the old would come the new. But the quality of these phenomena was never guaranteed, least of all here. “We don’t have many of those on Kadara.”


	5. Chapter 5

_ Ryder, _

_ Good news. I’ve had my people go through the logs we found at the Roekaar base. Looks like Venn Terev left behind a kett transponder. I couldn’t get anything out of it, but your engineers might fare better. If you can get it working, you can probably trace the signal to your quarry. _

_ Before you go off hunting the archon--I saw in the port’s logs that your ship’s not scheduled to depart for a few more days. Are you available tomorrow night? Something interesting just fell into my lap. _

***

Ryder found it inane that, after everything he had done and been through, people still cared about how he dressed. Growing up, his mother had bought all his clothes. Then he’d shipped out to biotics training and the Alliance, and he’d never had the chance to delve into fashion the way he suspected other people did. There was a narrow window of time, between when he’d come home and Mom’s diagnosis, that there was time--and then just as quickly, there wasn’t. Days and seasons had blurred together like a spinning zoetrope, individual moments bleeding into a singular, indivisible moment of Time. It felt, on some days more than others, like it had happened hundreds of years ago.

Ryder tugged at the sleeves of his jacket in discomfort. It wasn’t  _ his  _ jacket, not really. His initial plan had involved digging out the only pieces of real formalwear he owned, one of the heavy, starched double-breasted tunics that were omnipresent on the Citadel. But then Harper had laughed:

”We always thought those looked silly.”

“Wait, who did? The asari? Your unit? Women in general?”

“Everyone else in the galaxy.”

“That can’t be right. I’ve seen turians wearing these, too.”

And Harper had given him a pointed look, like that was explanation enough, just as Vetra and Drack emerged from the kitchen to compliment his attire. Vetra informed him that she had attachable pockets, if Ryder wanted, that would adhere to the outside of his clothing. He could use them to store extra ammo, or snacks, if he got hungry. Drack’s suggestion was “more bones.”

The rest of the crew had then taken this as invitation to contribute to the project of Ryder’s ensemble: Jaal offered an angaran necklace he owned but never wore, Peebee suggested showing “more skin” (“You know, like a Blasto girl that seduces the bad guy into giving her what she wants”), and Kosta had appeared in a football jersey and shorts, so no one cared to take his advice seriously anyways.

Kallo, he was informed, knew a great deal about salarian formalwear due to a childhood fascination with STG spy movies. But he knew very little about human fashion, unfortunately--only that he would avoid asking Dr. Anwar for help, since she seemed to be as unfamiliar with color and pattern theory as Gil was with a  _ ship repair manual  _ (at the last part, he “accidentally” hit the comms button to engineering)--and he wished he could be of more help.

Gil, mercifully, had offered him a jacket. The only thing he owned that wasn’t covered in the Tempest’s guts, he’d claimed. 

So, finally, Ryder had arrived at the door to the Outcast base in pants (white, Initiative, but not overly so), a maroon shirt that Jaal had picked out (“The angara will approve,” he’d said cryptically, like he could predict what novel fashion would go over well with the locals), and a heavy jacket with the high collar that had been fashionable approximately 600 years ago in the Milky Way. Gil had been mistaken, Ryder realized--there was a smudge of grease by the zipper. He rubbed at it but couldn’t seem to get it out.

One of the guards by the door cleared his throat.

“I’m meeting a friend,” he assured him. As though on cue, Ryder heard footsteps approaching from behind.

“He’s with me.” Ryder heard Reyes say. He was also, Ryder was glad to see, mostly out of his armor. He wasn’t surprised to spot the outline of a breastplate under his duster; after all, Ryder was wearing one, too. Bulletproof vests were practically casualwear on Kadara.

“Reyes Vidal,” Reyes informed the guard.

Sloane’s guard looked up from his datapad, his finger still hovering mid-scroll. Registering the name with a raise of his eyebrows, he nodded his head to Reyes and stepped aside. “Go ahead.”

Reyes walked past and turned, smiling, waiting for Ryder to follow.

“You’re awfully popular with Sloane’s people,” Ryder remarked. They fell into step together as they walked through the base’s halls. Ryder could already hear the cushioned thump of music leaking through a closed door, weaving its way down the corridors. Reyes navigated the base with the confidence of someone who owned the place. But then again, he seemed to do that with everything he did.

“Not as popular with Sloane, I’m afraid. Not like you are,” he said cheerfully, pointing with two fingers that they should turn left here.

“Is that why you invited me?” Ryder asked, genuinely curious He accidentally brushed Reyes’ shoulder as they made their turn; Reyes let him, and Ryder was the one to break contact. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were, or rather, what  _ Reyes  _ thought they were. Ryder knew that he didn’t know if they were just allies or friends--both had been in short supply in Andromeda. Most of his life, really. He wondered if their relationship existed with far less uncertainty in Reyes’ mind.

“Ryder, you wound me.” Reyes feigned offense, but it was half-hearted. He seemed distracted tonight, his eyes darting instead to the door they’d stopped in front of. The dull bass of music bled through its steel, and Ryder thought he saw the lights that lined its frame pulse in time with the beat. Reyes looked around and stepped closer to make himself heard over the music: “There are important players here tonight. You should mingle. Made a good impression.”

Before Ryder could respond, the door hissed open and Reyes led him through with hardly a gesture. Those who bothered to look, stared--Ryder tugged at his jacket’s hem, feeling distinctly like a VI in the Hyperion’s Cultural Center.  _ Hello, my name is Pathfinder Ryder. No, the other one. If I disappoint, I’d like to gently remind you that I am representative of neither my entire species nor the Initiative... _

“Reyes Vidal,” a voice cut through the crowd. “And Pathfinder Ryder, what a welcome surprise.” An angaran woman pushed past the stares, ignoring the murmurs that were circulating. Their arrival had caused a stir, palpable under the heavy thumping of music and fog of alcohol. The crowd--a mix of Milky Way species and angara--parted in deference to the woman.

Reyes’ smile reached his eyes as he outstretched his arms in welcome. “Pathfinder. Meet Keema Dohrgun, the angaran representative to Sloane. And a friend.”

Ryder raised his eyebrows. He wondered if Reyes was being polite, or if Keema really was a friend, in all manners of the word. He imagined Reyes had a lot of colleagues, acquaintances and contacts that respected him, maybe even liked him. But someone he cared about, confided in, trusted and shared frivolous gossip with late at night? Ryder felt an unexpected pang of betrayal, as though he’d tacitly assumed that he and Reyes had belonged to a strange, shared club of friendless-but-ally-hungry professionals. Not for the first time in his life, Ryder felt distinctly out of place amidst a thronging mass of people. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he finally said.

Keema laughed, bright and tinkling. “Reyes mentioned your professionalism.”

Ryder blinked, trying and failing to decipher the coded meaning in her words. “I hope that’s not a bad thing,” he tried to say agreeably.

“Oh, not at all. The opposite, in fact. Kadara could use a more predictable presence,” she said blithely, as though the party they were at wasn’t being hosted by Kadara’s  _ un _ predictable presence, who lounged across the, admittedly large, chamber on her throne. She seemed to catch Ryder’s gaze, because she added, “I wouldn’t worry about her. ‘Angaran representative’ is mostly a title, but it’s an important one. Sloane knows she couldn’t rule Kadara without my official backing.”

She grinned, again, and Ryder had never thought to describe the sharp teeth of the angara as “wolfish” until now.

“Keema’s advice doesn’t apply to the rest of us,” Reyes interjected. “So be on your best behavior.” He rapped Ryder’s shoulder with the joint of an index finger. “Stay out of trouble, you two. I need to go take care of something.”

“Don’t worry about us, Reyes. I’ll make sure he stays safe.”

“I’d rather that Ryder keep an eye on you,” Reyes quipped back. He tapped briefly at something on his omni-tool before dismissing it. Making eye contact with Keema, then Ryder, he smiled and nodded in farewell. “It won’t take long. Sorry to abandon you like this, Ryder--I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” He was already walking out the door as he saluted.

“And there he goes,” Keema narrated. She turned her attention back to Ryder, none of her playful demeanor leaving with their mutual acquaintance. “I was hoping he’d bring you, Pathfinder. You’re all he talks about lately.”

“All good things, I hope,” Ryder said, not entirely registering her words. He took the opportunity to properly scan the throne room for the first time. Outcasts mingled with the local angara, conversation lubricated by ever-flowing alcohol. In one corner, the asari bartender from Kralla’s Song had a surly scowl plastered on her face as she served drinks. Music blasted from speakers that Ryder couldn’t see; it was likely they were repurposing a local PA system. The rays of Kadara’s long sunset streamed in from behind the Queen of Kadara herself, who struck a formidable silhouette as she watched over the proceedings with a drink in one hand.

“Oh, please. He likes you, you know.”

Keema’s voice tore him from his inspection.

“What?” That could mean many different things. Keema’s last few sentences caught up to him quickly and violently. It wasn’t that Ryder didn’t want to be liked, or that he suspected Reyes  _ didn’t  _ like him, but rather that he was perturbed that he might be the subject of late-night gossip between two friends. But perhaps he was jumping to conclusions. “Reyes has proven a trustworthy ally,” he said diplomatically.

Keema, amused, lifted eyebrows she didn’t possess. “That’s what you need to survive on Kadara. Friends, and a reputation. You haven’t flown under Sloane’s radar, Pathfinder. Nor Reyes’.”

“I don’t think anything gets past Reyes,” Ryder deflected, recalling the extensive database they’d utilized in tracking down the Roekaar. He fiddled with the hem of his jacket, realized what he was doing, and shoved his hands into his pockets. He felt acutely aware of the feeling of his teeth in his mouth, a distraction he tried to smother. “Speaking of which, where is he?”

Keema shrugged. “I make a point of not getting involved in Reyes’ business,” she said, looking pointedly at Ryder, “unless it involves his dates.”

Ryder narrowed his eyes, unsure what angle Keema was probing him from. She seemed to be laying out a series of tests for him, but he couldn’t be certain what qualities she was hoping to assess. “Of which I’m sure he has many.”

Keema sighed. “Oh, you’re no fun.” Her face morphed as she relented. Ryder recognized the mask of professionalism that descended, equal parts bright and saccharine. “Well then,” she asked, changing the subject, “how’s the Initiative outpost coming along?”

“You know--?” Ryder began to ask, but answered his own question: of course Kadara’s angaran representative would know. She would have been next on his list of contacts once Sloane showed signs of relenting. “It’s a work-in-progress, but I’m optimistic.” he shared. He didn’t know what information Keema had, or if she’d even support the Initiative’s efforts.

Keema cocked her head in thought. “Between you and me, I would be wary of any promises made on Kadara.” She smiled neutrally, as though she were observing an odd phenomenon of weather and not suggesting the lackluster trustworthiness of the party’s host.

“In general, or…?”

She shrugged. “Sloane runs a government of the people--if people want the kett gone, she brings the laser cutters and the stakes. If the people want a galaxy free of Initiative influence…”

Ryder could connect the dots. He was curious about another: “And if the angara want more of a say in the affairs of the planet?”

Keema laughed, identifying the irony. “Sloane’s not a woman of the people,” she corrected. “She’s a woman of  _ her  _ people. And her people don’t always know what’s best for Kadara, let alone the galaxy.”

“Then who does?”

“That would depend on who you asked. But don’t concern yourself with this, Ryder. You didn’t come here to talk hypotheticals,” she said. “Just stay cautious, and stay flexible. I know that’s what I’m doing. The politics here are more tumultuous than Sloane lets on.”

Ryder grimaced. “Noted,” he said. “I appreciate the advice.”

“Good.” Keema nodded. Her easy expression returned as she made to pull away from their conversation. “I won’t keep you any longer, Pathfinder. I’m pleased to have finally met you.” She gestured with her head towards the bar. “Go enjoy the party.”

“You too,” Ryder said, watching her easily reintegrate herself into the crowd. He didn’t know what to make of Keema, let alone her cryptic tests and advice. Not to mention, where the hell was Reyes?

“Pathfinder Ryder!” a salarian--in a Citadel-style tunic, Ryder noted--approached with a glass in one hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you--”

“The human Pathfinder, here on Kadara?” from another direction, an angara. “What are the Initiative’s plans for repairing relations--?” Both figures made to enter his circle of conversation.

“We want to establish legitimate trade routes with the Nexus--” A human with a tight ponytail had spotted him.

“--air toxicity has decreased nominally by over 50%, but relatively--”

“--contracts stipulate that regulation-compliant ships--”

“--people missing for weeks--”

Ryder felt his biotic implant hum at the nape of his neck, the hair there beginning to stand on its ends. Dr. T’Perro had warned him against using his biotics after he’d overextended himself in the Roekaar raid. If she’d had her way, he wouldn’t be out of his bed right now. 

A disembodied hand passed him an antiseptic-smelling drink, which he took gratefully and downed in a single go. He was just starting to feel a physical buzz in his body when Ryder’s omni-tool pinged, alerting him of a new message. Ryder had never been happier to see it light up. A second ping came shortly after, followed by a third and a fourth. He’d never been more grateful for a horrible, urgent matter that needed his immediate attention. He excused himself as he practically ran for the door, his omni-tool lighting up with increasingly faster alerts.

The music was much quieter in the hallway, coming through muffled and distant. A few security guards shuffled their feet, clearly wishing they were off-duty and a part of the festivities. Ryder took a few more steps before reaching for his omni-tool.

_ Pathfinder _ .

SAM. Ryder had hardly heard from the AI all night.

_ I did not think anything warranted my interruption _ , SAM explained.  _ Until now. You do not have any unread messages--those were false pings I sent to excuse you from the situation. _

_ Thanks _ . Ryder breathed a sigh of relief.  _ I owe you one _ .

_ I am not keeping count _ , SAM assured him.  _ If you are looking for Mr. Vidal, my sensors indicate that he was in this hallway not long ago. I believe he is in a storage room several halls away _ .

SAM shared a map of the facility with Reyes’ location marked on his omni-tool. Ryder walked towards the coordinates without thinking. It seemed only natural that a blinking point on his map should be his destination.

Not far away, Ryder found the door to the storage room, mag-locked, with a blinking keypad, all but labeled “KEEP OUT.”

_ I can attempt to hack the keypad _ , SAM said.  _ Although chances of failure are low, if I fail, Sloane and her security will be alerted that someone is trying to break in to one of her rooms _ .

Ryder stared.  _ This is where Reyes is? _

_ Yes. Heat signature scans indicate that a human is behind these doors. It is likely Mr. Vidal. His presence makes it all the more likely that this keypad can be hacked without being traced. _

Ryder nodded without saying anything, holding up his omni-tool to the keypad. There was a moment--and then the doors hissed open. No blaring sirens went off. Inside, wedged between several crates stacked to the ceiling, Reyes spun around in alarm.

“Ryder,” he breathed. He motioned for him to enter.

“Should I be worried?” he asked, looking around the room.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Reyes said. A nervous smile played on his lips. Ryder saw that the opened crates around the room held bottles of alcohol: wine, beer, ryncol--stuff from the old world.

“Are you sure? Because it looks like you’re going through Sloane’s stuff, right after you told  _ me  _ to stay out of trouble.” Ryder quirked the corner of his mouth, amused and emboldened by the alcohol inside his body and the crates of the stuff he’d found Reyes in.

Reyes raised an eyebrow in return, smiling. “Ryder,” he said, surprised. “Gloating is a new look for you.”

“Like you and being cornered?”

Reyes started to smile in mock offense before spying something behind him through the open door. “Hey now,” he started to say. “Shit--someone’s coming.”

Ryder backed away from the door, stepping closer to Reyes’ space.

“We need a distraction.” Heavy footsteps, slow and deliberate, came from the hall. A patrol.

Ryder felt a steadying hand in the middle of his back and turned around to find himself face to face with Reyes. They were pressed up against one of the walls, but not quite hidden by the crates. They’d easily be visible from the doorway.

In the fraction of a second in which time slowed, Ryder noticed the following: 

Reyes’ gaze met his; his eyes fell to his lips; and back up again, a shared understanding falling between the two. Reyes leaned forward a microscopic amount, and Ryder practically fell against his mouth, catching the other off-guard and pushing him up against the crates. Ryder felt Reyes’ hands find his hips, their chests flush against one another. Reyes’ body heat radiated through his clothes, past the bulletproof fabric under their shirts. His mouth was warm, and wet, and that was about as much sensory information Ryder’s body was able to handle without setting off a biotic firework show in this storage room.

Reyes pulled away--and time resumed, a river unstopped. He looked dazed and pleasantly surprised. “I think we’re in the clear,” he said. Ryder heard footsteps receding in the distance and a scornful scoff.

“Right,” he said, neither of them pulling away. Ryder felt, illogically, like he was trying to hold a magnet away from a metallic surface. The magnet and metal being his face and Reyes’, respectively. He felt himself wrench his body away.

Reyes smoothed his hair, ruffled from the encounter, and started to extract himself from the crates he’d been pressed against. “You’re full of surprises, Ryder.” He grinned as he shimmied to the top of the stack of crates, giving Ryder a full view of his ass in tight pants. “Finally! Here it is.”

“Whiskey?” his brain offered helpfully, his eyes tearing themselves away just long enough to catch the label on the glass. Fortunately Reyes didn’t need more prompting.

“Not just any whiskey,” Reyes said, leaping to the floor. “The only bottle of Mount Milgrom in Andromeda. Triple-distilled and 645 years old. This isn’t whiskey--it’s a treasure.” He cradled the bottle in his arms, giving it a loving pat.

Ryder shook his head. “I hope it’s worth it.”

“Come on,” Reyes said. He held the whiskey in one hand and another out to him. Ryder instinctively reached out to take it. “Let’s find out.”

***

Kadara seemed to be perpetually in sunset, though Ryder knew that was technically impossible. When Kadara  _ really  _ was in sunset, though, the planet made sure you took notice. Salmon and clementine warred across strange skies, silhouetted by full clouds and the stark, efficient architecture of the Initiative exiles. Mountains cut entire swaths of color out of the skies, tendrils of native flora peeking out from their bases. 

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Reyes intoned from beside him. They were perched on top of a roof overlooking Kadara’s market. The market was in-between hours--the last of the afternoon crowd were filtering out, and the night crowd had yet to wake. “I sometimes forget.”

Ryder took a swig of the whiskey, long past his initial worries that its quality was wasted on him. If this was supposed to taste like anything other than woody medi-gel, he’d stopped caring several drinks ago. “I forget, too,” he admitted. He held the bottle out to Reyes, who took it. “Just don’t have time.”

Reyes took a sip from the bottle. Ryder had been trying for the past half hour to not think about how they’d been drinking from the same bottle, only to conclude that trying not to think was itself a form of thinking. Their hips brushed where they were sitting adjacent on the roof’s corrugated sheet metal, and Ryder dared not move.

“I can imagine,” Reyes said. He set the bottle between his thighs and leaned back, his shoulders brushing against Ryder’s. “You’re a busy man. Do you ever have time to be just Ryder, and not the Pathfinder?”

Ryder’s brow furrowed as his head attempted calculations more complicated than his body’s primal demands for more heat, more booze, more touch. “I’m always the Pathfinder,” he said.

Reyes scoffed. “I should hope not. Surely there’s a person under that shiny Initiative armor.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Ryder laughed as he snatched the bottle back from between Reyes’ legs. He held it in front of him without drinking. “I’m a one-man path-finding machine.”

“A machine that sometimes makes out with smugglers in storage rooms?”

Ryder thought about this, restraining his brain from taking errant paths in his memory.  _ When it keeps him from getting reported to Sloane _ , he wanted to say, but that wasn’t what Reyes was asking, nor what he was trying to answer. “It’s not a very good machine,” he admitted. “But it’s better at that than being a person.”

Reyes looked at him, knocking shoulders before returning his gaze out to the horizon. “Hm,” he said by way of acknowledgment. “It is a very good machine. I had my doubts, at first.”

“Most people do,” Ryder agreed, feeling an odd moment of clarity amidst his alcohol-induced giddiness.

“But you have dreams for Kadara. For its place in the galaxy. And plans, too, not just dreams--that’s more than can be said for most of the exiles on this planet.”

“Mm,” it was Ryder’s turn to say.

“More importantly, you have the will to make them happen. Plans are nothing if they’re not realized.” Reyes said casually. He held out his hand for the bottle, and Ryder obliged. “I respect that.”

“You have plans of your own, Reyes?”

Reyes laughed and took a sip of the whiskey, exhaling in appreciation as he pulled the bottle away from his lips. “To be someone,” he finally admitted.

“You are someone,” Ryder said, thinking about the other man’s petabytes of data, his connections throughout Kadara, the incredible asset he’d been to Ryder’s team. Ryder wanted nothing more than to be the competent leader he was. But, perhaps, more of a reflection on himself than Reyes, he suspected there was more to being someone than a title, or power. Ryder had both in spades, yet here he was: machine-man, Pathfinder-Ryder. 

“You’re someone to me,” Ryder amended, and he took the bottle from Reyes’ hands, unmistakably eyeing Reyes’ lips as he wrapped his own around the mouth of the bottle. He watched Reyes’ tongue lick his lips. 

“I’m starting to think that kiss was more than just a distraction.”

And Reyes leaned in, then, and Ryder didn’t miss a beat as he met him for the real thing, the bottle clutched in one hand as the man pulled his body close.


	6. Chapter 6

Ten minutes before the Tempest was scheduled to depart from Kadara’s port, Ryder got a message. His omni-tool blinked in alert, informing him that Sloane Kelly had personally extended an invitation to discuss an outpost on Kadara. There was a very short list of people, Ryder thought, that he would risk incurring dock fees for. Fortunately, the woman able to waive them was high on that list.

So half an hour later, he found himself back at the throne room of the Outcast base, the centerpiece of Sloane’s castle. The room was uncharacteristically empty, devoid even of her right-hand turian and many of the security guards that typically patrolled the halls.

Sloane didn’t rest idly on her throne, but paced anxiously back and forth across the hall. Her sharp turns made her fortress feel less like a castle and more like a cage.

“You’re here,” she said shortly, looking up when Ryder entered. She paused in her pacing. Ryder noticed she was dressed entirely in battle armor.

Ryder looked around the empty room. “You wanted to talk?”

Sloane folded her arms. “Yes.” She didn’t seem happy about it. “Look, there’s something you want from me, and now, there’s something I need from you. I’m calling in a favor.”

“Okay,” Ryder agreed, afraid of saying the wrong thing. He wasn’t about to squander this opportunity to finally make progress on an Initiative outpost on Kadara. “What made you come around?”

Sloane frowned and returned to her pacing. Slower this time, more for emphasis, though the paranoia ebbed through in waves. “I forget you weren’t around for the Nexus uprising. The Initiative asked me to put down a rebellion--I’m asking for the favor to be returned.”

“Is Kadara in trouble?” Ryder hadn’t seen anything unusual in the streets. At least, unusual for Kadara. There were no angry mobs, no raucous gunfire, no calls for Sloane’s head. It had been an oddly quiet day in the marketplace.

“Kaetus thinks we have a potential usurper on our hands.” Sloane’s eyebrows knitted in worry as her hand, out of reflex, went to the pistol at her side. She drummed a pattern onto its holster.

It was Ryder’s turn to worry. Was this what Keema had been referring to? “What makes him say that?”

“We found a note with plans for invading the base. There’s coordinates that lead to somewhere out in the mountains: an enemy base of operations. They’re planning an assault. Our weapons and supplies have been going missing. Someone had the gall to steal a bottle of _fucking Mount Milgrom_ from my stores the other day.”

Ryder coughed suddenly as he fought to keep his expression neutral, pushing down any incriminating feelings. “Is it a coup, then?”

“Urex doesn’t have the balls,” she spat. “But anything’s possible. Kaetus was going to check out the rumors of a Collective base with a squad; he’s running late. I’m beginning to think it’s not a coincidence that these rumors leaked while you were preparing for takeoff, Pathfinder.”

Ryder didn’t disagree. The archon waited for them across the galaxy; if it had been anyone other than Sloane, Ryder would have struggled to justify staying another minute on Kadara. Perhaps the only other person was Reyes. For business purposes strictly.

“Shit,” Sloane suddenly growled, stopping in her tracks. She glanced up from her omni-tool. “I’ve just got a  _ fucking ransom note _ , from the  _ fucking Charlatan _ . Look alive, Pathfinder. It’s time to earn that outpost of yours.”

***

Sloane and Ryder drove out to the coordinates in the Draullir caves in silence, punctuated only by bumps in the landscape and Sloane’s quiet cursing. The Nomad had been packed away while the Tempest prepared for launch into FTL, so they were taking one of Sloane’s personal vehicles, an armored buggy. Sloane drove with her hands clenched around the steering wheel. Ryder could hear the leather strain.

The roar of the engine echoed across the Kadara plains. Sloane’s face was etched with worry. Just before they’d left the base, she’d received a message from Kaetus’ communicator: he’d had been ambushed by Sloane’s men, roughed up and a picture of his battered body sent as leverage. The coordinates they’d suspected led to a base were actually for a meeting point, courtesy of the Collective. Sloane had glowered and spat and angrily double-checked, triple-checked that her gun was loaded before stomping out the door. Ryder had followed.

The caves were becoming a familiar site for Ryder. He’d been here before. The coordinates, this time, took them around the eastern side of the mountain range into a barely visible entrance. Sloane dismounted from the vehicle, opening the door before the car slowed to a complete stop.

“There,” she grunted. She unholstered her gun and adjusted the collar of her armor. Ryder, too, gripped his shotgun, trying to suppress the instinct to flex his biotics. Dr. T’Perro would have his head if she knew he was putting himself in danger when he was supposed to be recovering.

Inside the cavern, pockets of skylight lit the packed dirt floor in uneven circles of light. The largest pooled at the base of a small cliff; SAM spotted the figure before either of them did.

_ Pathfinder, there are other people in the cave. _

From the shadows emerged a familiar face.

“Reyes?”

Reyes Vidal blinked in surprise, his dark hair as impeccable as always, dressed sharply in a set of armor that Ryder hadn’t seen before. He seemed to reflect on something, then smiled ruefully. “Ryder,” he greeted. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

“And neither are you,” Sloane spoke up, stepping forward. “I’m here for the Charlatan, not some third-rate smuggler.” 

Something clicked in Ryder’s brain: a delayed synapse firing, days too late. Reyes’ connections on the port. The information he had on the Outcasts, the Roekaar, the daily goings-on of the planet. Even his relationship with Keema. All along--Reyes had been someone.

Sloane laughed humorlessly from behind him. “You? You’ve got to be joking.” She trained her gun on the man she’d identified, zero mirth in her eyes.

“Surprise,” Reyes said. He leapt from his pedestal, raising both hands to show that he was, for now, unarmed. He seemed to be deliberately avoiding Ryder’s gaze.

“Where’s Kaetus?” Sloane demanded. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

“Because you’re an honorable woman, of course.” Reyes didn’t even bother with a smile to accompany his levity. “Kaetus is safe, for now,” he assured her. “As long as you don’t do anything rash.” He spread his arms in a placating manner. “I’m challenging you to a duel. You and me. Right now. Winner takes Kadara Port.”

Ryder opened his mouth to intervene, but nothing came out. What the hell would he say? Who would be talking? He needed both of them alive for disparate reasons. He needed the outpost, and he needed an alliance with the Outcasts, and both of those things required Sloane Kelly alive. But also, he needed--rather, he  _ wanted _ \--Reyes. And he wasn’t sure if that was enough yet.

After a beat of mental calculus, Sloane spoke. “I’ll take those terms.” She holstered her gun. Ryder knew from her records that, before being Nexus head of security, she had been Alliance. Ryder had no doubt she was a better shot than Reyes. The threat of losing Kaetus appeared to have tipped her over the edge.

Reyes nodded, and the two locked eyes. Instinctively, Ryder stepped out of their predatory loop. They circled each other, hands hovering by their guns. Ryder felt a wave of nausea well up inside him.

_ Sniper _ , SAM spoke.  _ His sights are set on Sloane _ . SAM directed Ryder’s attention to the darkness of the cave, where Ryder could just barely make out the glint of a barrel of a gun behind Reyes’ head. Reyes wasn’t playing fair, after all, he realized.

The shot rang out through the cavern. 

As soon as Reyes stepped out of the way, the sniper had fired. Sloane barely seemed to register what had happened as she fell to the ground in two parts--to her knees, then her chest to the floor. Reyes blew the smoke from the end of two fingers.

“Bang.”

Reyes looked up, finally, then, to meet Ryder’s eyes. Uncertainty was written across his face. He tore his gaze away for a moment, to call to his men in the back of the cavern--“Get her out of here. Prepare the crew. Kadara Port is ours tonight”--and waited for them to file out. Ryder counted three--the sniper, and two other Collective members who picked up Sloane’s body from either end. In the distance, Ryder heard the stuttering hum of a shuttle landing.

“This is what you wanted,” Ryder commented. He didn’t bother asking why he hadn’t told him. What would he have to gain by sharing his secrets with someone trying to cozy up to Sloane? Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t have. Ryder would have done the same.

“I wanted peace,” Reyes offered by way of explanation. It was just the two of them now, standing in a circle of light in the otherwise lightless cavern. Ryder thought he saw a small spatter of blood on the floor. He tried very hard not to look at it.

“Well,” Ryder finally said, meeting Reyes’ gaze. “Congratulations.” Ryder didn’t know what emotion he was supposed to convey, and he didn’t trust his voice not to betray him in some treacherous way, so he fought to sound as neutral as possible. He felt as though a door was being closed in front of him, a possibility foreclosed. Not only for what he might have foolishly assumed was between them, but also for who he, Ryder, might have been.

“I didn’t plan for you to happen, Ryder.” Reyes reached for this arm, then pulled away, conflicted. “And when you did, I was selfish. I liked the way you looked at me. I was afraid that would change.”

It had changed, at some point, Ryder thought, but now it hadn’t. Reyes was mistaken, and Ryder had been right all along. They were not people. They couldn’t be--not here, not now.

“Nothing’s changed,” he lied. And he clapped a hand on Reyes’ shoulder, giving it a squeeze before stepping away from the skylight. There was an archon waiting for him, a galaxy that needed saving. The world needed a Pathfinder, and Ryder would have to suffice.


	7. Epilogue

_ HELEUS NEWS SERVICE: Pathfinder Ryder has brought the salarian ark home. Reports suggest that the Paarchero was intercepted by kett forces in the Tafeno System. Reached for comment, officials declined to provide any details on the status of the ark or its inhabitants. However, they confirmed that Pathfinder Raeka is alive and well. Amid the confusion and uncertainty, the Nexus now braces for an influx of salarian settlers-- _

_ You have one unread message. _

_ FROM: Ryder _

_ SUBJECT: Drinks? _

***

Ryder arrived at his doorstep with bags under his eyes.

“Ryder,” Reyes said, stepping aside. A lofty promotion later, he still hadn’t moved out of his base of operations in Tartarus. He had no interest in ruling from a throne room that overlooked his domain. Reyes was far more content to gaze upon its abstractions into maps and data on his omni-tool. Now, he felt self-conscious inviting Ryder into his private room in a bar that smelled perpetually of stale booze.

Ryder nodded in greeting and moved past him into the red-lit room. He took a seat on the couch without prompting, sitting straight with his legs spread and his hands resting on his thighs; by the time the doors had closed behind him and Reyes moved to take the seat opposite him, Ryder still hadn’t relaxed.

“I appreciate your help setting up an outpost here,” Ryder said formally. His face was facing his, but his eyes were looking past him. Reyes deflated, a little--it turned out Ryder was here to talk business, after all. Reyes could work with that.

“Of course,” Reyes said. “A gesture of goodwill from Kadara’s new leadership.”

Ryder’s eyes settled, deliberately, somewhere along Reyes’ gaze. “Let Keema know I appreciate it.”

“I’ll make sure it gets to the people responsible,” he assured him. Reyes could see the other man testing the waters. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Reyes caught embarrassment flash across the other man’s face. “Just water is fine, thanks.”

He nodded and began to key in an order on his omni-tool. Reyes could really use something strong right about now.

“You know,” Ryder contributed out of the blue, “My father hated alcohol. He didn’t smoke, either. He was running miles every day until they put him in cryo.”

Actually, Reyes knew this. Alec Ryder was an enigma to most of the people who had come with the Andromeda Initiative, a figure with a few, highly-repeated facts but with very little information about the man behind the titles. He knew, for instance, that the senior Ryder had worked on a project that got him blacklisted from most Alliance operations; that, after his dismissal, his family had moved to the eastern coast of the United North American States, where he’d been born; and, of course, that he took impeccable care of his mind and body, sleep notwithstanding.

“I always thought he was uptight, but now that I think about it, maybe that’s just who he was,” Ryder said. After a pause, he added: “I didn’t want to be like that. But now I don’t know if I have a choice.”

“We always have a choice,” Reyes responded.

Ryder stared at him. “What do you know about me?”

Reyes didn’t know where this was going. He knew a lot about Ryder: his marks from biotics training, the make and model of his most-used guns, his blood type and uniform size and every single transaction he’d ever made in Kadara’s marketplace. He knew, also, that Ryder was more transparent than he imagined himself; he was a politician, but not for power; obligation was bestowed upon him, and in it he found vision and the will to see it realized. He conveyed all this to Ryder, who looked unconvinced.

“You’re describing the Pathfinder,” Ryder countered.

Reyes shrugged. “And I’m the duplicitous bastard who controls Kadara and likes fine liquor.” At risk of being misunderstood as condescending, he added, “But you’re right. I don’t know much about you, Ryder. But I want you to know that I’ve always been upfront about who I am, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”

He watched Ryder’s face soften. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s why I trusted you.”

Reyes felt the sharp twist of guilt in his gut. “If you have questions, I have answers,” he offered breathlessly. “My mother named me Reyes Vidal--I wouldn’t lie about such things. I was born on Earth, before I fled on a shuttle and never looked back. My call sign was Anubis--”

“Anubis?”

“Assigned at random. Part of the shipping company’s naming protocol.”

“What does it mean?”

Reyes shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just a name.”

“But doesn’t it  _ mean  _ something?”

“Not to me,” Reyes said. He frowned. “I left it all behind in the Milky Way: Anubis, going to sleep hungry, everything and everyone on Earth--the man who walked onto the Nexus 600 years ago isn’t me.”

Ryder seemed to think about this. He shrugged, finally. “If you’re not that man any longer, I won’t ask you to introduce me.”

Reyes took a moment to process this. “Thank you, Ryder.”

“You once asked me why I came to Andromeda,” Ryder reflected, staring at his hands. “It’s one of those questions everyone seems to have an answer to. Everyone except for me. But no one waited for me to find one--my answer came before the question. I have a title, a responsibility. It’s mine, and I have to do it. But I’m not here to be somebody.” Ryder took a breath and searched Reyes’ face carefully. “I already am someone. I’m the Pathfinder--but I don’t know how to  _ be _ .”

Ryder suddenly looked up at him.

“How did you do it? How did you leave it all behind?”

“Is that what you’re here for? Answers?”

“No,” Ryder said after a pause. His eyes flicked beyond Reyes again, at some horizon he couldn’t see, then abruptly returned to him. There was a hunger in his eyes that Reyes hadn’t seen in a long time. He’d seen it last in a mirror. Ryder licked his lips and he thought, for the first time, he saw something unmistakably  _ Ryder  _ behind the mask. “I’m here for purpose.”

If Reyes thought something inappropriate about precisely where on his body the Pathfinder could find purpose, he stifled the thought as quickly as it arose. He got up from his seat and motioned for Ryder to follow him outside. They needed fresh air.

Outside Tartarus, past the stacks of empty cargo containers and up the elevator to Kadara’s port, Reyes led him down a familiar path towards the former Outcast base. He navigated the streets with a practiced ease; they still weren’t his streets, not in name, but he felt the ground undoubtedly respond differently to his step.

“We came here on the night of the party,” Ryder remarked, taking the hand Reyes held out to help him onto the ribbed roofs of the base. Before, they’d looked over the port--the market, the guns, the steam from the vents, and the constant hum of shuttles taking off from the docks. Commerce, credits, and cash. This time, Reyes led him higher, over an outstretched awning and onto a section of roof that overlooked Kadara’s landscape. Reyes grasped the other man’s arm as he pulled him up and over, gathering his footing on the wobbling roof. Ryder held him for balance and didn’t let go.

“People, we don’t belong here--” Reyes tapped his head “--or here--” he tapped his chest, just over his heart. “Or even out there.”

Reyes gestured out below them, where formerly toxic springs lay still. Vast stretches of clean water were swaddled in pale rock and rust-colored dirt. In the distance--Ditaeon, the fledgling Initiative outpost, still in the process of construction. They’d just started laying the foundations. Other outposts--Angara, Collective, even Outcast--dotted the landscape. Even further still were the Remnant ruins: stark, austere, and foreboding reminders of an unreconciled past. And, as usual, the sunset--perpetual, permanent, at rest on the horizon. Always setting.

Their hands interlocked, Reyes gave Ryder’s a squeeze; Ryder pressed back in response. Reyes to Ryder. Ryder to Reyes. Two nodes in a link.

“We’re here, in between.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with this story to the end! I hadn't written much fic at all, let alone anything this long, before this piece. I still can't believe I've finished it, loose threads and all. Thanks again to everyone who's read this far, left kudos, or commented--you're all rock stars. Thanks for joining me on this weird little journey. :-)


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